Jill Konrath

Don't miss this FREE, but invaluable session!

With all the data out there, a big challenge for today's sales and marketing teams is knowing what to pay attention to. Our customers and prospects are overwhelmed as well. Yet to be effective, we need to cut through all this "noise" to connect with them. 

In this 1-hour webinar with me & Joe Lucas (smart guy from InsideView), you'll discover how to:

What's a value proposition – and why is it important? It's a clear statement of the tangible business value that companies get from using your product or service. It's the outcome of using your offering – not what your offering is.

For example, I do training. No one cares about training. But, when I work with my clients, I help them with new client acquisition and faster sales cycles. That's what they get from my training programs – and that's the ONLY reason people hire me.

So, your challenge is to figure out what your outcomes are. Here's a tip. Every value proposition has three components:

Have you ever heard of trigger events? If not, you're in for a wonderful wakeup call.

A trigger event is a sudden change in a company's priorities. Your prospect may have been happy with the status quo yesterday, but these new circumstances create or deepen business issues that can no longer be ignored. 

Here are some examples of events that can potentially create sales opportunities for you:

You know what I hate? Not knowing if my prospect has opened my emails… wondering if they disappeared into a black hole… and never being able to catch them on the phone. I suspect you feel the same way.

That's why I wanted to let you know about HubSpot Sales, a new, free and easy email prospecting tool that I'm loving. Here's why:

Salespeople spend an inordinate amount of time developing cold call emails, hoping they'll create the perfect message that will get prospects to say, "Yes! I want to meet with you immediately."

That would be great, but it takes a lot of practice to find the best way to pique your prospects' interest. Here are 3 ways to evaluate the effectiveness of your prospecting email: 

Is it spam to send a prospecting email to someone you don't know? I get asked about that a lot. Nobody wants to be seen as a spammer. So, let me give you some guidelines.

Officially, an email is spam when you're blasting a huge number of people with the same message. It's also spam if your email lacks official contact information or people can't unsubscribe from these massive blasts.

Here's a typical exchange between a prospect and a salesperson when this common sales objection is raised:

Clearly, that's not working.

I'm often asked, "Which is better – an elevator speech, unique selling proposition or value proposition?" All are effective at different times, but there is one clear winner for piquing prospects' interest in your offering.

How should you respond when a prospect asks you to tell them about your stuff? Most of us get excited because we think they're really interested in what we're offering, but the truth is they're really looking for a way to dismiss us.

Beware -- if you talk about your stuff, you'll be brushed off in moments!