Ep. 109 How to Close More Clients on Your Discovery Calls with Nikki Rausch
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What if you could make just a few small tweaks to your communication with potential clients in order to close more discovery calls and land more clients?
Sales is an unavoidable part of running a successful virtual assistants business, but the good news is that we don’t have to turn into used car salesmen with sleazy tactics in order to see results.
My pal and sales expert Nikki Rausch has a gift for teaching business owners how to sell their services authentically without ever coming across as pushy.
In today’s episode of The Support Squad Podcast, Nikki is sharing her tips for holding successful discovery calls and closing them like a pro.
If you’re ready to move away from wishy-washy discovery calls and into closing with confidence, you are going to love today’s episode!
Let me tell you a little bit about Nikki:
CEO of Sales Maven, an organization dedicated to authentic selling, Nikki Rausch has the unique ability to transform the misunderstood process of “selling”.
With 25+ years of experience selling to such prestigious organizations as The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Hewlett-Packard, and NASA, Nikki shattered sales records in many industries, receiving multiple “top producer” awards along the way.
Today, entrepreneurs and small business owners from a wide range of disciplines hire Nikki to show them how to sell successfully and authentically, without being pushy or salesy.
An engaging and sought-after speaker, she shares the secrets of her sales success through illuminating keynote addresses and business-changing workshops. Her robust Sales Maven Society ignites game-changing outcomes for clients.
Nikki’s three popular books are available at Amazon. And her podcast, Sales Maven, can be found on your favorite podcast platform.
Connect with Nikki:
Website | Facebook | Instagram | LinkedIn
FREE Gift: Closing the Sale eBook - Simple Tips to Increase Your Confidence
What are the subtle cues and buying signals that people give when they’re interested in doing business with you?
I teach a process to a sales conversation. I call it the selling staircase. Step 2 is learning how to create curiosity. When you're having those coffee chats, you want to be able to create a little bit of curiosity. And when you do create curiosity, the people that you're in conversation with will give you buying signals.
A buying signal is a verbal or nonverbal cue that somebody gives that indicates interest. It doesn't necessarily mean they're going to sign up on the spot, but there's some kind of interest there. Your job is to act on it in the moment.
There's a couple of different buying signals:
One of the most obvious ones is when somebody starts asking you questions about your business, like “How do you work with clients?” or “What is a package for you or how does somebody hire you?”
When you get a signal like that, you've got to check it out. Your job then is to answer the question, because they've asked you a question. Then you follow up with an invitation.
For instance, if somebody says “How do people work with you?” Then you would answer the question and then you might say something like “Is that something you might be interested in knowing more about? Or, or are you looking for a virtual assistant?”
If they say “Yeah, I am in the market for a virtual assistant” now you can shift gears and move into the discovery mode of the sales conversation.
Look for those buying signals, issue invitations, and then move people to that discovery process.
How and why do you “pre-frame” your discovery calls before conducting them?
There are a couple of reasons to “pre-frame”. One - it creates safety in the conversation. You might be nervous about having this conversation with somebody, but they also might be nervous talking to you because they don't know what you know and they're being vulnerable by admitting that they need help.
You need to establish yourself as the leader of that call. An example might be, “It’s so great to have this time with you today. Thank you so much. We're scheduled to chat for 20 minutes. Does that still work for you?”
And then I'm going to say “In order to make this conversation meaningful and productive for you, is it okay if I start a couple of quick questions now?’
The pre-frame establishes the flow of how the meeting's going to go versus just getting on a call and winging it.
What one question do people forget to ask in a discovery call?
There are going to be specific questions to your business that are super important, but I'm going to give you a general question that I think everybody can ask, regardless of what it is that you do:
“What's important to you in regards to hiring a virtual assistant?”
The reason that you ask that question is because when they can come up with an answer in that moment, they're essentially giving you a little bit of a roadmap of how to earn their business.
If you pay attention to what they say, you can reference back to how you're going to meet that need. It's really like you're speaking their individual language and it sends the message. “I see you. I hear you. I have a solution that is custom for you.”
Why should you NOT coach (or demonstrate your expertise) during a discovery call?
You have some sense of expertise that this other person doesn't have because frankly, why would they be talking to you if they could do it themselves? But they don't know what you know, so when you start providing what seems like a solution - they just know that one thing that you gave them.
Imagine that all your expertise is this big, beautiful beach behind you and it's just filled with grains of sand. Each grain of sand is some piece of expertise that you can bring to this person and you give them one grain of sand, but they don't know about the beach. They think that piece of sand is the beach. You give them that and then they go “Well, now I don't need to hire you.” Or they think, “Well, it seems really simple. So I probably shouldn't invest money in this.”
Coaching during a discovery call is a huge mistake because you'll often talk people out of hiring you.
It also puts you in this position of “I have to prove myself to you.” And that creates an imbalance in the relationship. One party should never hold more power than the other because people frankly will start to abuse it.
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