How Do I Know My Customer’s Motivation? Hoffman Hacks How Do I Know My Customer’s Motivation? January 9th, 2024 Uncertain if your customer is motivated by pain or pleasure in making this purchase?  The answer is right on their resume.  One of my favorite questions to ask prospects on discovery calls is, “Why have you chosen to work here?”  Seems like a pretty innocent question, but what winds up happening is that the prospect now has to literally defend the choices they’ve made that wound up with the career that they have. If they are proud of the choices they’ve made, you’l ..read more

What is the Best Way to Research a Customer? What is the Best Way to Research a Customer? January 9th, 2024 Looking for ways to do even more research on a customer?  Well stop thinking like a salesperson and start thinking like a buyer.  One of the quickest ways to learn more about an organization is to have them sell to you, which is exactly what I do on highly strategic accounts. Before I start networking and navigating and doing my research online, I like to do an inbound lead request where I’m presenting myself as someone with curiosities about their company, so that a sales ..read more

How Can I Create Urgency in My Proposals? Hoffman Hacks How Can I Create Urgency in My Proposals? Want quicker response time for your quotes?  Change your months to Mondays.  I don’t why we do this, but in sales, we tend to default the expiration dates of our quotes to 30 days. All that really does is it asks our prospect not to look at this quote until the 29th day, and I don’t think I want to do that if I want a fast and furious pipeline. Make sure all of your quotes expire the following Monday that you sent them. It forces a quicker response for your prospect and more anxiety ..read more

How Do I Quickly Get My Customer Enagged? How Do I Quickly Get My Customer Enagged? Would you like to get your customer far more engaged even earlier in the sales cycle?  Promises. Promises.  You know, the most powerful type of buying signal is when a customer delivers on a promise – they actually do what they said they were going to do.  So why don’t we make it easy for them? Instead of giving a customer a laundry list of things to do for us and action items, how about give it to them one at a time? Do what I do.  Ask for simple, actionable closes early so they work th ..read more

Does My Signature Matter in My Emails? Hoffman Hacks Does My Signature Matter in My Emails? Struggling to get your email returned?  Why not sign off with more grace?  We don’t think a lot about our signature lines in our email, but it all counts when it comes to open rates and response rates. And long signature lines that advertise where we went to school or our graduation date, or our LinkedIn profile only reduces our social value and reduces the likelihood of a return.  Keep your email signature simple. Leave it to your name, your company’s name, and one phone number. Then ..read more

How Do I Get More Commitment On My Deal? How Do I Get More Commitment On My Deal? Want to know how to gain leverage in any negotiation? You just got to give a little more.  We think so much in negotiation about what we want that we sometimes don’t think about what we’re able to give. But the things that we give our prospect, based on the reaction of the prospect when they get it, generally reveals leverage. It lets us know what’s important to them, it lets us know what they value, and it lets us know what they might do more for if we’re able to offer it to them in the future.  Ta ..read more

How Many Demos Should I Give? How Many Demos Should I Give? Are you starting to get tired with that stale old demo you’ve been showing?  Maybe you need a few demos.  If we make one demo and show it over and over and over again, even if the customer’s never seen it before, we have, and our excitement and enthusiasm is going to start to wane.  So for my own self-preservation, I like to have multiple demos. Then, have your prospect earn additional demos. Start with small, broad ones, and then as the prospect starts to invite other people into the deal, you can show more detaile ..read more

How Do I Get More Honesty From My Customers? Hoffman Hacks How Do I Get More Honesty From My Customers? Tired of getting the runaround from customers and prospects?  Well, maybe you need to start getting more honest with yourself.  It’s really easy to hear what we want to hear in sales, particularly when we know that rejection often means the end of an opportunity, but it’s really critical that we hear our customers for what they say and we’re honest with ourselves in what we hear.  The next time a customer says something like, ”Shouldn’t be a problem,” or ”All set,” or “I d ..read more

How Do I Get More Leverage On My Deal? How Do I Get More Leverage On My Deal? Want to keep your customer at the negotiation table a little longer?  Well get ’em committed.  One of the most critical elements of negotiation is what’s known as commitment, which states that the longer someone is engaged in a process, the more likely they want to see that process completed.  So it’s important not only that we’re closing for things that are of real weight at the end of the deal, that we’re also closing for little things early in the deal so that the customer stays committed for a ..read more

What is a “Reasonable” Close? What is a “Reasonable” Close? Still struggling to get your emails returned? Well – be reasonable. I know you want a meeting. I know you want a referral, but the goal when you send an email to a stranger is actually just a response or positive engagement.  So be reasonable in what you’re asking for, and asking a stranger for a meeting is often unreasonable. Try asking for information about their company or maybe the PowerPoint deck of a slide presentation that they gave at a conference.  Look for a response more than action and find that reasonable re ..read more