Watch the video on this training:

I want to preface this training with the importance of consulting. Too many service providers neglect the importance of consulting on their calls and feel that their presence alone will be the basis for acquiring the information they need to close a deal. This narrative is false. You guys need to understand that unless you already have tons of content posted, there won’t be a pre-existing status delta entering the call. It will therefore be up to the sales rep to establish it.

The primary method of bridging this gap will always involve consulting because it will showcase your expertise and prove to the prospect that you are a person worthy of solving their problem. You will see that as long as you follow the correct framework, even the most sophisticated buyer archetype will cave in and provide you with detailed answers to your questions.

Step 1 → Figure out their main inefficiencies

Make sure that your questions are open-ended. We want to receive as much information as possible in the initial diagnosis stage before we can consult them, and this can only happen if their answers are expansive.

Step 2 → Ask them their ideal solution

This will tell you what their summer vacation is, and it is what you will use as leverage when you are pitching your offer. This will also come in handy when you are handling fear-based objections.

Step 3 → Figure out if at all they have put in an active effort in solving their problem. This is where you can start showing them your expertise by consulting them. You are touching base on the information they give you and are educating them. Make sure to not go on long tangents and keep the prospect actively engaged in between your explanations.

Step 4 → Get them to expand on their inefficiencies and verbally articulate how they are prohibiting their desired outcome.

If done right, at this stage the prospect will already see you as an expert and will be more than willing to expand further on their previous inefficiencies. You want to be very careful in the way you phrase your questions here because you don't want to sound too salesy. The goal here is to get them on the same page as yourself before you begin your pitch.

Figure out their main inefficiencies → If you are running an e-commerce agency you need to figure out what the prospects' past experience was like with their prior agency. If they are on a call with you that means they are most likely not working with an agency. It is your job to find out why. Find out if communication was an issue, or maybe their creatives were not converting. You need to pinpoint the problems and bring them to the attention of your prospect and iterate the consequences of not solving said problems. It is even better if you can formulate your questions in a manner that gets the prospect to admit the consequences of not solving their problems.

If you are running a coaching/consulting business you need to figure out key pieces of information, such as:

1. Number of appointments prospect is booking every month?
2. Number of appointments that are qualified?
3. Closing rate on qualified appointments?
4. How is the founder allocating their time in the business?
5. How many appointments are coming in from Outbound, inbound & referrals.
6. How much are they involved in the booking process?

• If you are able to follow the steps stated above you will have created significantly more leverage for yourself for the rest of the call.

Ask them their ideal solution →  If you are running an e-commerce agency you need to figure out what your prospects' ideal agency would look like in terms of their performance and communication. This will help paint a very clear picture in your head of their expectations and will allow for you to tailor your presentation. You will be able to appease their desires and nullify their fears.

If you are running a coaching/consulting business you need to figure out what they want to achieve in the next 6 months of their business. This can not only be a revenue goal but also an infrastructure goal. They might be micro-managing their entire business and want to not only hit a certain benchmark revenue wise, but may also want to be removed from the grunt work. Figure out their summer vacation and probe as much as you possibly can. It is imperative for you to figure out their why.

Figure out if at all they have put in an active effort in solving their problem →

If you are running an e-commerce agency you may have already gotten this answer from figuring out their inefficiencies because it would have included poor results from their prior agency. If for some reason you did not gather the insights of their past agency make sure you get the prospect to expand on their past results. Churn rate for e-commerce agencies is very high and you want to see if there has been a pattern of the same problem occurring continuously.

If you are running a coaching/consulting business ask the prospect what they have tried to do in solving their problem? Perhaps they bought courses/consulting in the past but it did not work. You need to figure out their history of dealing with their problem prior to your call so that you can best consult them on a solution. It is also possible that prior to your call with them they had no knowledge of their problem. If that is the case then simply conclude their problem. Get them to admit the importance of solving it, and jump into your pitch.

Powerful questions to ask the prospect during your call:

What inspired you to get on this call today?

How is your time currently being divided up within your business?

What is your ideal solution?

To what extent do you feel you have good service market fit? (not for e-commerce)

Why do you want to scale to (desired number)?

How urgent is x?

Can you elaborate on x?