Do you know what you don’t need when you want to work with corporate clients?
- Bonuses.
- Pushing deadlines.
- Coming up with incentives.
And you know something else you don’t need? Wait forever for them to say YES to working with you.
Yes, I know this is going to ruffle a few feathers but stick with me.
People tell you that it takes a really long time to get corporations to buy your offer. It’s common knowledge, so everyone accepts it. But just like when people believed the earth was flat, we find that wisdom isn’t actually very common!
The role of urgency and scarcity
Let’s be clear on a few facts:
Urgency and scarcity are strong persuasive forces. When we feel it is urgent to resolve an issue, we are more likely to take action. The same goes when we believe something to be in scarce supply. We take action to avoid missing out.
That’s why online marketers tell you to push the FOMO.
Which is all well and good – but it doesn’t work when you want to work with larger organizations.
See, there is no need to create bonuses or use other traditional marketing tricks when you are trying to land corporate clients. Because buying decisions in organizations are not driven by those kinds of tactics.
Why the usual urgency and scarcity tactics don’t work with corporates
Corporate buyers need to get people on board. They need to get authorization. They need to deal with their brainfarts, internal status biases, and other dynamics that mean they can be very slow in making decisions….
This leaves a lot of people confused. Because on the one hand, they hear the sales gurus say that you need to create scarcity and urgency to get the sale. On the other hand, telling a corporate decision-maker that they’ll miss out on a bonus will earn you a raised eyebrow at best…
How do you partner up the findings from the science of persuasion and the reality we see when talking to big business prospects?
I’ll let you in on a secret.
By using the method that I teach, you actually create urgency and scarcity – just not the way that most sales gurus teach!
3 steps to create urgency and scarcity when selling to corporates
- The first thing we do is to create a value proposition (this is the value framework that you use to define specific, customized offers for individual prospects). This value proposition solves a big problem for your prospect.
We explain exactly what you help your clients to achieve. For example, if you help teams be more productive, we identify what that means for your client. What are the specific results they will see as a result of being more productive? Maybe they’ll get products to market in a shorter time. Or meet more deadlines.
If you improve communication, how will your clients know that it has improved? Will they see fewer emails? Sit in fewer meetings? (don’t worry, I’ll show you how to figure this out)
2. Next, we quantify this improvement – what is the financial impact of your work? This is not a promise but it helps to translate intangible results into language that corporations can understand.
We’ll work out how much your prospect could save by reducing those soul-destroying meetings.
Or by getting their products out faster.
And again, you don’t need to worry about how this is possible – I have a detailed, focused process to quantify literally any type of improvement work you can do for corporates.
And while quantifying the potential is not a guarantee but an opportunity, we also keep testing and refining who your ideal client is so that can get the best results (trust me, you don’t want to work with those who need to be “convinced” – that’s like pushing water up a hill)
3. We then take your value proposition and define the fastest way to receive the YES from a prospect. This involves being very clear on how quickly they can see at least some success, as well as narrowing down on the logistics, time and level of commitment your prospect has to make when accepting your offer. The higher the commitment, the longer the sales cycle: e.g. it takes longer to sell a 12-month program for all senior managers or a global organization than a 3-month senior leader development program. Note: this is almost NEVER about price. I show you how to sell both.
Creating a value proposition like this allows us to get the attention of big business prospects who are ready to buy. Because it highlights the downsides of their current situation as well as the opportunities for improvement. Done right, this creates urgency without calling it urgency.
What most sales trainings are missing
The typical sales training programs almost never dive into the details of how to demonstrate both your expertise and specific results.
They talk about you telling prospects about the benefits of your work, but refer to it in vague terms like “improved communications”, “better teamwork” or “higher productivity”. How many of them push you to get specific?
And without getting specific, your prospects wonder if you can really help them…(if they even open your email). And that means they don’t have any urgency to speak to you, never mind buying from you.
On the other hand, the senior leader who has just seen another important deadline missed because their teams are not working effectively will certainly realize that they need help that is specifically targeted to enable teamwork to hit (or exceed) deadlines. Especially when the marketing explains exactly how this is done – not using corporate BS lingo or vague statements.
And when you position your value proposition and your offer this way, you are doing two things:
Impact of an effective value proposition
You stand out from the crowd of same-samey corporate consultants whose advice hasn’t helped before AND that makes you special – and scarce!
They’ll want to work with you – and realize that your diary might be booked up.
That is why I get corporate clients to ask me for availability rather than having to fit around their diaries.
What happens when you have such a clear and specific value proposition is this:
- You know exactly who your ideal client is and where to find them
- You will have people readily responding to your outreach
- You create customized high-ticket offers and your prospects don’t bat an eyelid at your prices
- Your conversations with prospects are smooth and effortless, they never feel icky
- You hop off the feast and famine income roller-coaster because you have regular and repeat business with dreamboat corporate clients (you can even keep your personal clients too)
I know some people will believe that surely it can’t be this simple but the truth is that working with big businesses as a coach or consultant only has to be as complicated as you make it.
But if you want to explore in detail if you could bring your offer to corporates, DM me or book a complimentary diagnostic assessment where we look at the market need, (aka do corporates buy what you offer?) market readiness (aka who is ready to buy this?) and market positioning (aka how do you present what you do so that you get a quick yes?) and if it makes sense, I will tell you about the Landing Corporate Clients Intensive and how we can work together.
