The 4 criteria prospects use to judge you and your proposals

Jill Konrath, author of SNAP Selling: Speed Up Sales and Win More Business with Today's Frazzled Customers , joined the show recently. You can listen to our conversation here.

I asked her about creating useful value propositions, useful for the prospect's needs. And we first discussed the criteria prospects use to evaluate our proposals. Here's what I asked:

Let’s talk about this value proposition and how people fail to create one that’s useful. What are the 4 criteria prospects use to judge us and our proposals?

Here's what Jill answered:

Most people have a mental checklist for people who approach them.

The 1st criteria is:

Are you aligned with my needs? They are saying is this aligned with my business objective. This is the number one criteria.

I wouldn’t talk about my sales training programs., I would talk about their need to speed up sales.

The 2nd criteria:

Is this a priority issue...for me? They already have so many flames going up in their office they may still delete you.

The 3rd criteria is:

Does this person sound like an invaluable person? Does this person sound like they bring expertise to this situation? Clients are so busy they want to know does this person bring some expertise for me.

The 4th criteria is:

Does this sound too complicated? Is this something I can grasp?

We’re trying to impress people. We feel an extraordinary need to tell them everything we offer.

Which one is the most important or prevalent?

The most important is the first one: alignment. You may be simple but if you’re not aligned then it’s irrelevant.

Too many sales people think that what they’re selling is important. But they don’t realize that what they’re selling is irrelevant.

Instead people want the results that deliver for them.

Sales people think their job is to tell the client about their product and services. But that’s the last case. If they want information they go online. You don’t need a sales person to go into excruciating details.

Jill's an expert. Her success comes the increase in sales she generates with sales training she delivers for her clients. You should listen.

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