During the “Live the Story” Conference, participants were told about a company that took the time to brainstorm and map out the top three challenges they thought their solutions could address. Interestingly, the second challenge the team came up with was not on the radar of a large group of prospects who had recently been surveyed by the company.
So, their first instinct was to avoid #2 altogether and come up with a solution that better aligned with the results of the survey. But, instead they decided to create dissatisfaction by leaning into that gap and having conversations around the challenge that prospects weren’t even aware they were facing.
Salespeople are often trained to recognize trigger events that will prompt decision makers to buy. For example, maybe a new CFO has just been hired, or an acquisition recently occurred. Sales strategist Jill Konrath says: “Organizational change creates urgent and compelling needs. So do changes in the business environment. These “trigger events” create openings for your products, services or solutions.”
Although it is important to monitor events like this within your pipeline and take advantage of the opportunities they provide, the most powerful forces of change are your conversations.
If you can steer prospects to see that they are not safe through disruptive and honest dialogue, you become the trigger event that creates an undeniable need for change moving forward.