Make Discovery Part of the First Call Agenda
The good news is that your BDR (Business Development Rep) has scored a meeting for you. The bad news is that you lack a plan to convert the lead into an opportunity. What do you do?
First of all, the objective of the first call is a combination of trying to generate enthusiasm and qualifying the opportunity for fit and timing (for both the prospect and us). What is the type of information we need to qualify an opportunity and how do we get it?
Of course, it starts with the person with whom we’re meeting: where does this person fit in the organization, what is his/her history at the company, what is his/her complete background (job history, mutual LinkedIn connections, college attended, etc.)? We also want to understand the business challenges this person is trying to address and whether we have a strong solution to address them. Finally, we want to understand how the person is measured (his/her KPI's), so we can further align with how our prospect will determine overall success, so we can emphasize how our product specifically supports these metrics.
At the same time, we try to generate enthusiasm by identifying similar companies (who are already our customers) in order to gain credibility with the prospect. Explaining how we have helped similar companies with similar challenges will likely encourage the prospect to be more candid with us about the business issues and any political biases.
Once qualified as a legitimate opportunity based on product/market fit, we need to avoid being pinned down for a price. Delivering a price before fully understanding our differentiated business value will likely qualify us out by the customer. The prospect always wants to know the approximate price, but we must defer that discussion until after we’ve developed a business case that is unique to us.
Finally, we want to close for deeper discovery. If the product fit is there, we want to delve more deeply into a “day in the life” of our likely personas, so that we can deliver a truly differentiated demo and solution that provides extraordinary and unique business value.
If we complete the first call with a plan for more discovery (including meeting more people, such as the ultimate decision maker), then the first call will be a success.
If your SaaS company is struggling to convert first calls into qualified opportunities, please reach out to Virtual Dave for advice or email dave@moicpartners.com.
Virtual Dave is an AI-based virtual sales support tool trained on 40 years of enterprise software sales experience, available 24/7 to enhance sales process consistency.
