You’ll see dozens of threads on LinkedIn about the importance of finding a prospect’s pain. Pain Pain Pain! They aren’t wrong but that thinking is missing a huge opportunity for salespeople.
Instead of just focusing on, “Is there a problem or challenge that my product or service can help with?” keep an eye and ear out for, “Is there an opportunity where my product or service can help capitalize on?”
The best one is if your product or service can help your prospect open up new revenue streams. Prospects are always going to be excited about ideas to create new revenue. Plus a contact at a company who is in charge of revenue is a hell of a lot easier to contact!
In the job I retired from, I sold a platform that was used to design, develop and deliver virtual labs for software training. Yeah we could save a company money by making it easier to design their labs and host them on our platform.
The fun conversations started when I would show them how they can take the training resources they developed for live instructor-led training and repurposed it for self-paced training. The ultimate “make money while you sleep!” Ideas like that separated me from my competition who were solely focused on live classroom training.
It’s the same thing I did when I was selling radio ads. I wanted to get away from traditional advertisers like car dealers and furniture stores. Recruitment advertising is where I hit it big! Staffing companies used radio ads to find prospects for their clients (it’s how they got paid).
Research industry trends! Along with competitor activities, and emerging technologies, it can help identify gaps in the market where new products, services, or business models could thrive and make you a hero!
Joint Ventures! Maybe you can do a joint venture with another company. Identifying and reaching out to potential partners or affiliates who can help cross-promote or co-develop new products, leading to expanded market reach and new revenue streams.
Upselling and cross-selling strategies! Identifying opportunities for upselling and cross-selling to existing customers, maximizing the lifetime value of each customer.
Brainstorm ideas of your own. Take a walk, shoot some hoops, whatever it takes to clear your mind and conjure up some ideas how prospects can monetize your product or service. You are only limited by your imagination.
If you want to bounce ideas off of me, hit me up
Happy Selling!