Spamageddon: The ugly truth about your team's prospecting and how to course correct

It's here...Spamageddon. Take a look at your email inbox (or second inbox - your junk folder) and I would bet dollars to donuts - it goes a lil something like this:

● "I hope this email finds you well - product pitch"
● "Bumping this to the top of your email box - did you get my email about my product"
● "I haven't heard back from you - but again, my product"

Or you pop into your LinkedIn inbox and it's more of the same - happy to connect with you Celeste Berke at Celeste Berke Sales Training & Coaching, curious, "are you open to adding 15-20 more clients per month or", "your profile caught my attention,

I'd love to schedule (link) and talk about editing your podcast - here is my portfolio".

Ahhhhhh.

Hyper-Connectivity Calls For Change

In today's hyper-connected world, if you do not offer a pattern interrupt and talk about something that is important TO your buyer, you blend in! More and more emails are being sent, more messages, more asks, more calendar invites and more product pitches. We are pissing off buyers!

Why are they so pissed off?

Buyers are waving the white flag because your latest and greatest product with features and bells and whistles is all you are talking about. Not only are you bombarding all of their channels, you are speaking in a way that resonates.

**Now, I am in no way saying all of the channels and multi-threading isn't a staple in the sales world, this article is not about that and there are plenty of experts and gurus in the trenches daily teaching amazing outreach.

What I am talking about is taking a GIANT step back before you contact one more person and ask yourself - what problems do I solve?

Heidi Fin on Upsplash

Your North Star Guiderails - The Course Correction

If you are a parent you may resonate with this. Remember when your child learned how to walk? They pulled themselves up - fell down - and did it over and over again. As a parent, you were fearful of them falling, so you were there in the background as a set of guiderails.

Sales is no different. Without knowing your North Star (your guiderails), you will continue to blend in and default to your product.

Enter the Problem Identification Chart (PIC). This handy chart acts as your organization's North Star. That means, everything you talk about, questions to prospects, what you write about or go looking for is guided by what is on this chart.

I Know What You Are Thinking

How hard can completing a PIC chart be? ⬇️⬇️⬇️

Courtesy of imgflip

Haha, I'm half kidding, but the PIC chart is a challenging exercise. The mistake that most people make when completing it is to put technical problems in the business problem column (so there is a tip!)

Technical problems (broken processes) are what sales people love to talk about.

We love showing our our product fixes their problem and how if a buyer signs off on our product, they will live in the happy future state when everything is fixed.

The Truth About Buyers

The issue is, buyers do not buy because of broken process/tools (what we as sales people love to talk about), they buy because the current state is intolerable and untenable. Buyers buy based on fixing a business problem and because the cost of change outweighs the cost of same.

✔️Upon completion of your PIC chart, you will unequivocally KNOW how to talk about the problems your customer faces.

✔️You will know the big business problems, the impacts and root causes and have guiderails for all of your conversations

✔️You will be able to sustain your buyer's attention as your conversations will be problem-centric vs. product-centric

If You Do Nothing Else...

Download the PIC chart, start to work on it solo or get the team involved and collaborate. It's a fun exercise to do with a team. Many customers who have gone through this exercise respond back to us and say - "WOW - there is no alignment here on what we solve for".

Here's to reducing the Spamegeddon one problem-centric discussion at a time!