Closing client deals is as much a science as it is an art. Sure, some sales professionals seem to have the art of closing deals locked down and can do it at will. But don’t let this dishearten you because, at the core, closing deals is ultimately about taking specific steps beforehand to identify your customers’ needs and prove your value.
The key to customer onboarding: Your job is to do as much as you can to learn about them, their needs, their challenges, and their goals.
You can follow a simple process to learn more about your prospective customers. Below are four questions I recommend you ask your potential clients so you can identify their needs quickly, show your value, and make yourself more readily able to provide solutions.
1. Ask about their definitions of success.
How do your potential clients measure success? What are their companies’ key performance indicators? What challenges keep them from achieving success?
Be sure to ask about what kinds of success your prospects want or need to achieve with your help; otherwise they’ll just give you a rundown of what they’ve done before or what they wish they could’ve done differently. You want to improve the way they do things — not just offer iterations of previous accomplishments.
2. Understand the experiences your potential clients provide to their customers.
How do your prospects find their customers? How do they generate leads? What do their typical customers experience?
Business success is built on the experiences your prospective clients provide to their customers. And employees at each client company offer different customer experiences depending on their industries and products or services. Your services can only help if you actually take the kinds of experiences your clients offer their customers into account.
3. Determine their goals.
The next step is identifying your potential clients’ goals in as much detail as possible. If you know their goals, you can then work on developing solutions to help them get there. In other words, you can only be of value if you can align your goals with theirs.
And again, ask what problems typically keep them from achieving their goals. Your services can appear even more effective if you know which problems to avoid.
4.Create immediacy.
Business leaders love having someone come in and solve their problems right away. Your job is to do just that. Ask your prospective clients what problems you can start on fixing right away — or, at the very least, what they think are their most actionable problems.
By being able to act and show results quickly, you can demonstrate your value and convince your potential clients you have what it takes to solve their much larger problems once you artfully close their deals.
It’ll be easier for you to get to the core of what’s at stake for each company when you ask your clients what their challenges are, where they want to go, and how you can immediately prove your credibility by solving actionable problems.
[cta]For more customer onboarding insights and tips, don’t hesitate to ask me to lend a hand. Contact me, Mark McIntosh, RevGrow founder and CEO, today by calling 972-998-5132, and I’ll be happy to explain how my services can help.[/cta]
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