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Priority 1 – Convert leads, opportunities and enquiries into profitable business 71
Note that it is not my intention to give you word-for-word scripts. I don’t
like or believe in scripts. I want you to understand the underlying concepts
and get your team to think its way through being able to create its own
material around phrases and actions that team members feel personally
comfortable with.
The ve-step conversion process
Before I explain the simple ve-step process, I want you to understand
that there is a common theme and linguistic tool that runs through each
step: that is the need for the powerful use of questions in any interaction
with prospects. I actually refer to this as the ‘ASK concept’ of converting
enquiries, as asking conversational questions is the basis to this technique.
There are three important reasons why the use of questions works far better
than simply ‘telling’ the prospects things, or just blandly giving them
information:
1 Whoever asks the questions controls the conversation.
2 Asking conversational questions controls the focus of what people
think and feel.
3 A question commands a response. Think about it: if someone asks you
a question, don’t you instinctively feel compelled to give an answer?
Thus, regardless of whether you are dealing with an incoming telephone
call, making an outgoing call to follow up a lead or having a personal
meeting or visit from a prospect, your aim is the same. Through the skilful
use of questions you are seeking to control the conversation, inuence the
prospect’s focus and drive them towards the response that you desire.
Will this appear contrived and manipulative? No, because it is all done
casually, helpfully with gentle, soft, conversationally natural questions. In
fact, learn to do it well and you or your team won’t even realise that you
are doing it at all.
I also want you to take into account that this simple ve-step system for
converting enquiries is built around what I call the value v. price scales (see
Chapter 3). This reects my basic rule, which is to communicate as many
value benets as possible, before discussing the price.
As I explain each of the ve steps, I will of course be giving general exam-
ples, but I can’t possibly deal with every situation or business sector in
the book. It will be up to you to work out how to apply the conceptual
72 The Financial Times Guide to Business Development
principles behind the various stages in your own business. If you have a
problem with this, contact me and ask for help at [email protected]
With these various points in mind, you are ready to put them into practice
with the ve-step conversion process.
Step one: invite your prospect into a conversation and
set an agenda
Whether your prospect comes to you, via the telephone or face-to-face,
your rst step and objective is to engage them in a conversation. Most
prospects will either make contact with a specic standard question, or in
a retail environment they may simply just turn up and browse. You will
hear questions like:
‘How much?’
‘Do you have ...?’
‘Is it possible to . . .?’ etc. etc.
So how do you move them from their factual question to a conversation?
Easy, you ask a question back. Remember, a question controls the conver-
sation and focus and also triggers a response. If you simply give a price,
or a at, straight and direct answer to a question, you limit your chances
of actually having a chat with them. That doesn’t mean you need to be
evasive, but what you need to do is to try to get the prospect to be prepared
to share their needs, wants and if necessary personal issues with you if they
are relevant to the purchase. You need to try to take control and invite
them into a conversation.
So, for example, what happens if the prospect calls your piano tuning busi-
ness and asks the most predictable of all questions . . . ‘How much?’ You could
simply give the answer . . . ‘£50’, but the call may then end with the prospect
ringing around. If nothing else is raised, the likelihood is the prospect will
choose the cheapest. However, instead of launching into standard price and
fee information, ip things round and respond by asking them a question
and effectively pull them into a conversation with their permission.
You could respond with something like this in a friendly and interested
tone:
Prospect: I wonder if you can give me some indication of the cost of tuning
a piano?
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Priority 1 – Convert leads, opportunities and enquiries into profitable business 73
Handler: Absolutely . . . no problem . . . more than happy to help! But listen,
are you okay for a few minutes so that I can get a little bit of
background about what sort of piano you have, where you are
based, your timescale and anything else I should know? Then I
can give you the most appropriate gure and we can chat about
when would be most helpful to get the job done. Is that okay?
Prospect: Yes, that is ne!
Now obviously this is just a random example, which might not be directly
relevant to your situation (unless you happen to be a piano tuner), but it
contains many elements that you can adapt almost universally. Let’s see
what has happened here:
First of all, you will almost certainly have differentiated yourself from
the majority of the competition. This immediately creates a good
impression, reecting your interest in them.
By answering a question with a question, you have taken back
control.
By focusing their mind on what you are going to do and cover, you
are effectively setting out an agenda.
By asking ‘Is that okay?’ at the end and getting a positive response,
you are getting their permission to proceed to have a conversation
with them, where you will gather the information you require.
Step two: build rapport with the prospect
Building rapport is one of the hardest things to write about and describe.
In this context, it means creating and making a personal ‘connection’ with
the prospect. It is that intangible, almost unconscious, positive feeling
that you want them to have, which will inuence them in your direction.
Let me offer a few tips on rapport building to play around with. Once
you have invited yourself into a conversation and the prospect is happy
to respond, you could consider asking in your most informal and chatty
manner:
questions that will enable you to respond with empathy and interest
when you get their answers;
questions that will elicit their personal state and emotions;
questions that will get them to give you personal information, which
you can then react to appropriately;
74 The Financial Times Guide to Business Development
questions about what has triggered them being interested in your
goods or services at this moment in their life;
questions that will probably trigger a bit more conversation.
So, for example, you may be:
a solicitor who nds out a prospect wants a will because they are
going travelling for three months;
an optician who nds out a prospect wants contact lenses because
they have just got a part in a play with an amateur drama group;
a seller of lawn mowers who nds out that the prospect has just
moved house to somewhere with a bigger garden;
a seller of ofce furniture who discovers his prospect has just moved
into larger ofce premises to expand.
In each of these cases, when the prospect has parted with this sort of infor-
mation, you would be able to comment appropriately, chat about their
circumstances and ask more rapport building questions . . . ‘Where are you
travelling to?’ . . . ‘Wow, what play are you in?’ . . . ‘How big is the garden?’ . . .
‘Great to hear you are expanding, what business are you in?’
This doesn’t have to take long, but once you start getting these sorts of
answers you are on your way to making that ‘personal connection’. The
closer you get to that, the more the prospect will want to go with you
or your business and the harder it will be for them to go with someone
else, even if you are a little more expensive. On an unconscious level, the
connection you have begins to be a differentiating factor and a powerful
‘weight block’ in your favour, which may help minimise the importance
of price.
I know what you are thinking. What happens if the prospect just wants
direct answers and no chat? Fine, give them what they want and move
forward to the next step in the ve-step process. All you can do is try.
Remember, you are not going to succeed every single time. All you are
seeking to do is to do better than you (and probably most of your competi-
tors) are currently doing in terms of conversion rates.
Step three: bounce back
Bouncing back is really easy to understand and to do. It is simply the
process and technique of quite literally repeating back to the prospect,
using their words as closely as possible, your understanding of what they
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Priority 1 – Convert leads, opportunities and enquiries into profitable business 75
want with any circumstances and details they have provided. This will have
a positive inuence by showing you have listened, understood their situ-
ation and mentally interpreted it in the same way as them. For example:
‘So, Mrs Johnson, let me see if I have understood this correctly. What you are saying
is that you are looking for a “book and sunbed” holiday for two adults in Paphos,
at a four or ve star hotel, going from East Midlands airport for 10 nights during
September at a budget of up to £750 per person. Is that correct?’
Note, the expression ‘book and sunbed’ holiday uses the prospect’s phrase
and the nal question commands a response, which leads to the next step.
Step four: give the information requested
This is now the stage to explain and give the prospect whatever informa-
tion they have requested, which of course may well include the price. Do
it clearly, without hesitation and with as little technical or sector specic
jargon as possible. Make sure you also ask feedback questions as you go
along such as:
‘Does that make sense to you?’
‘Would that be helpful?’
‘Have I explained that okay, or is there any part of it you want me to
run through again?’
‘Do you have any questions for me?’
Explore ways to deliver your information and price, with as many benets
as possible and to include as many elements as you can nd, to add to the
perceived value.
If you couple the rapport brought about through the rst three steps of the
process, with the value and benets explained to the prospect, the more
willing they will be to actively ‘want’ to go ahead with you at the price you
want them to pay.
Step ve: ask for what you want
One of the main reasons organisations don’t get better conversion rates
is simply because they don’t ask for what they want. All too often I have
heard experienced enquiry handlers ‘ifng’ the prospect away. It is very
common to hear the phrase ‘If you would like to go ahead, please don’t hesitate
to get back to us.’
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