Four Phases of the Prime Process
The four phases of the Diagnostic Business Development process, also called the Prime
Process,
represent a re-engineering of the conventional sales process. The decision process approach
eliminates the inherent flaws in conventional sales processes and directly addresses the
challenges that salespeople face while trying to master complex sales in today’s marketplaces.
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Pain Is the Vehicle
… …that drives the decision to buy — the cost of the pain
is the accelerator! When you define the
cost of the problem, you put a price tag on the dissatisfaction the customer is experiencing. That
tag enables customers to prioritize the problem and then make a rational, informed choice between
continuing to incur its cost and investing in a solution. In fact, establishing an accurate cost of
the
problem is the only path to defining the true value of a solution. Cost is also the surest way
to
shorten the customer’s decision cycle. Think of the customer’s
pain as the decision driver and
the cost of the pain as its accelerator. The higher the cost of the
problem, the faster the
decision to solve it.
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Is There Someplace Better You Could Be?
Keep the idea of the Prime customer in the front of your mind by continually asking
yourself a
simple, but fundamentally radical, question: Is there someplace better I could be? Successful
salespeople understand that the best place to be is the place where they can leverage their efforts
and maximize their overall performance as well as their customer’s. They are continually
moving
toward that optimal engagement. As elements of success decrease with a current customer, at a
certain point, the odds of success become greater with a new customer. There is someplace better
you can be, and you need to take yourself and your resources elsewhere.
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No Surprises!
Lawyers are taught to never ask a witness a question unless they already know how
the witness is
going to answer. The same advice holds true for proposals in the complex sale: Never
put
anything in the proposal that the customer has not already agreed to and confirmed.
When
you surprise your customers with new information in proposals, they will surely surprise you with
unexpected, and usually negative, responses.
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