Home court advantage
Ask any professional athlete if they would prefer home court advantage in game 7 of the playoffs or take their chances on the road, which do you think they prefer? A no brainer. Home court advantage without blinking an eye. They know the building intimately, the playing surface, the comfort of their home locker room and the bonus that they only need to travel from their home to the arena prior to the big game. No time zone changes or unfamiliar hotel mattresses robbing them of precious sleep.
Ask any salesperson if they would prefer selling from their corporate headquarters vs. flying across the country to present and sell in an unfamiliar boardroom, they’d take home court advantage too.
These days the deck is evenly split between seller and prospect given the advent of Zoom. However, there are still opportunities to create home court advantage for the seller. Even setting expectations such as all cameras on or your team sharing the same virtual background are two examples.
An often-overlooked home court tactic is building a relevant questioning strategy based on your initial customer conversation(s). In your first real discovery conversation with your prospect, you’ll obviously do your best to extract BANT (Budget, Authority, Need & Time frame). In addition, you may want to take a page from the MEDDICC strategy.
Go the extra step and craft questions that determine if your prospect is a Coach or Champion.
MEDDICC, a highly successful qualifying questioning method clearly defines the role of a “Coach” and “Champion”. A Champion has the power to influence an ultimate decision, while a Coach holds less sway in the decision-making process. Both will add massive value and share intricacies about the company and decision makers, however the sooner you determine who your Champion is your home court advantage grows exponentially.
Identify your Champion early in the process and they can shepherd you through sticking points such as budget approval and procurement.
The next homecourt advantage tactic takes place prior to any customer facing meeting. The all-important Firm Future Commitment. The FFC is basically tantamount to a professional golfer walking the course prior to a practice round looking for hazards or a downhill skier snowplowing down the racecourse he’ll eventually hurl themselves down a day later.
In blogs to follow I will go into FFCs in greater detail, however one tactic to predict the future at the top of any customer facing meeting is to simply ask, “If we have a successful call today, what should we save the last 10 minutes to discuss?” This simple question will have your prospect give you the framework as to how to arrive at a mutual agreement at the end of the sales call.
Creating synergy with your prospect over Zoom is difficult enough, so make sure you implement The smallest of tactics that will give you the biggest home court advantage!
Best,
Jason