How to communicate what your products and services do for your customers, get their attention and understand their needs, with Michael Halper, author of “The Cold Calling Equation”

1. THE 6 PILLARS
OF EFFECTIVE
SALES MESSAGING
THAT DRIVES GROWTH
Business Growth ebook Series
Craig Klein
www.salesnexus.com

2. Table of Contents
Business Growth eBook Series
iii
Meet Your Hosts
v
Featured Expert—Michael Halper
vii
Featured Sponsor—LeadFerret.com
ix
The 6 Pillars of Effective Sales Messaging that Drives Growth
1
Sales Messaging
2
Value
3
Qualifying
8
Pain
10
Objections
12
Building Interest
16
Credibility
18
Additional Resources
22
Next Steps
24
www.salesnexus.com
Page ii

3. Business Growth eBook Series
We want you to grow your business. It is really that simple.
In fact, we surround ourselves with companies who share our belief that when we help you grow your business, everyone wins. We believe that when we help you grow your business, we also help grow communities, families, employers and our customers.
We have created this series of eBooks—in conjunction with a webinar series—to help you expand opportunities for growth in your company. This is true even if you are not a SalesNexus customer…even if you use
one of our competitors…we want to share what we have found to be useful for business growth.
Many businesses have great products and a great team, yet still struggle to master the strategies and tactics
of connecting with their market, standing out from the competition and closing sales. Toward that goal, we
have assembled a team of experts to share the best of what they know really works. Nothing is held back or
saved only for those who are clients of our individual company. Each eBook is packed with practical steps
any business can take immediately without busting the budget.
Below you will find a list of eBooks and webinars in this series. While each eBook builds on what was presented in the eBooks earlier in the series, you can choose to take them in any order. However, we strongly
suggest you read the first eBook or attend that webinar to get an understanding of how the information fits
all together.
To Your Business Growth,
Craig Klein, CEO SalesNexus
www.salesnexus.com
Page iii

4. Business Growth Series
THE MAGIC 5
OF CONTENT BASED
EMAIL MARKETING
THAT DRIVES SALES
The Magic 5 of Content Based
Email Marketing that Drives Sales
Business Growth ebook Series
Held on January 16h, 2013
A simple 5 step process to create
on-going, automated email campaigns that engage your audience and identify highly
qualified prospects.
Craig Klein
www.salesnexus.com
How to Qualify Sales Leads and
Focus on Sales Growth that’s
Profitable
Held January 30th, 2013
An in-depth look at how to use
simple questioning techniques to determine if a sales
lead will purchase and the powerful impact of consistent
qualifying.
360 degree View of the Customer
Relationship for Business Growth
Held on February 13th, 2013
An in-depth look at how strong
relationships between customers
and companies drive business growth and the risk of
mistaking a customer to sales person relationship with a
customer to company relationship.
www.salesnexus.com
Building a Successful Marketing
and Sales Process by Identifying
Your Customer’s “Pain”
Held on January 23rd, 2013
An in-depth investigation of how to
identify the emotional circumstances that cause customers to buy from you, how to question prospects to diagnose their “pains” and build sales processes that win!
Manage a Sales Process of
Actions that Lead to Sales Growth
Held on February 6th, 2013
An in-depth look at what should
be measured in every sales process, how to set goals for and measure it and how to
manage sales people to achieve business growth.
The 6 Pillars of Effective Sales
Messaging that Drives Growth
Held on February 20th, 2013
How to communicate what your
products and services do for your
customers, get their attention and understand their
needs, with Michael Halper, author of “The Cold Calling
Equation”
Page iv

5. Meet Your Hosts
Craig Klein, CEO, SalesNexus.com
As CEO, Craig Klein leads a team that is on a mission to help your business grow. They accomplish this goal
by providing an online Customer Relationship Management (CRM) that is fully integrated with an email
marketing system. Klein brings more than 18 years sales executive and management experience to designing SalesNexus solutions.
SalesNexus is a different kind of CRM and email system for many reasons. Perhaps the most meaningful is
the company recognizes that one size will not fit all in business. Since key people of the company come from
a sales background, they know how to work with you to find unique solutions specific to you, your business
and your customers.
Thousands of sales teams from around the world have discovered that SalesNexus takes the hard work out
of selling. That way you can focus on the people part of serving your customers. They know that you enjoy
sales because you enjoy people. SalesNexus will maximize the time you spend establishing deep relationships with your best customers.
This team feels success when they make marketing and selling easier for you. That is why SalesNexus is
hosting this Business Growth series of webinars and eBooks
Don’t forget that SalesNexus offers a 30-day free trial of their program so you can try it out…look around…
ask questions to determine if it is the right fit for you. During the free trial period, you can also download
your choice of 500 business contacts—with email addresses—at no cost at all via LeadFerret.com. Learn
more about LeadFerret below.
www.salesnexus.com
Page v

6. MEET YOUR HOSTS
Forrest Cassidy, CEO, LeadFerret.com
Lead Ferret is the world’s first 100% free business-to-business database with complete information. They
offer more than 10 million easily searchable B2B contacts—with emails—FREE.
In today’s business environment, it is critical that you use your time in the most time efficient manner possible. The objective of Lead Ferret is to make prospecting and generating leads easier for sales teams, recruiters, and small business owners.
The LeadFerret system allows you to spend less time prospecting and more time selling…and that leaves
more time to do the things you really love to do.
Learn more about Lead Ferret on a following page.
www.salesnexus.com
Page vi

7. Featured Expert—Michael Halper
Michael Halper, CEO, SalesScripter, LLC
Driving improvement in sales organizations is the mission of everything that Michael Halper does professionally. With more than 20 years in frontline sales, marketing and customer service, he brings innovative
solutions to all his clients.
We are honored that Halper agreed to share his expertise with us as part of the Business Growth Series.
Don’t miss any opportunity to learn from him. In addition to this series, here are a few ways you can get
valuable nuggets of sales wisdom from Halper:
• “The Cold Calling Equation”: As author of this groundbreaking book, Halper shares powerful insights
into the ‘blood sport’ of cold calling. Sales professionals always resist cold calls. Yet those who master the art of the cold call have always closed more deals and hit their goals. Cold calling success is
NOT about working harder or working more. Instead, it is about using proven, step-by-step tactics
to achieve immediate results. In addition, the book will help you make human connections and find
more opportunities. Get the book here.
• SalesScripter.com: This web based tool is a complete game changer in the field of sales. SalesScripter assists your company in identifying the details you need to create powerful sales messaging.
The tool will help develop your sales scripts, email templates, voicemail scripts, qualifying questions,
objection responses and more. Try SalesScripter FREE!
www.salesnexus.com
Page vii

8. FEATURED EXPERT—MICHAEL HALPER
• Launch Pad Solutions, LLC: Launch Pad is a training and consulting firm that helps businesses increase sales revenue by improving areas of sales prospecting and lead generation:
○○ Sales Consulting: Launch Pad works with management to establish sales messaging, processes,
and strategy that lead to immediate improvements in results.
○○ Sales Training: Training programs that help frontline sales people to improve their ability to effectively prospect. Sales people are able to make immediate improvements due to the effective,
yet practical and easy to implement, tactics.
○○ Sales Coaching: Launch Pad works with sales professionals and managers on a one-to-one basis
to help ensure the right steps are being taken to improve sales prospecting and lead generation.
○○ Appointment Setting Service: For businesses that do not want to spend their valuable time on
prospecting and working to generate leads, Launch Pad takes over that responsibility through an
appointment setting service. Under this model, Launch Pad’s team of telesales resources performs prospecting activities and schedule appointments for clients that have outsourced that
functional area.
www.salesnexus.com
Page viii

9. Featured Sponsor—LeadFerret.com
Lead Ferret is a sales organization’s most
powerful source of new business. Like it says
on the Lead Ferret website, when you access
this service—it is like adding 10 million+ contacts to your address book. The database
contains complete information including
email addresses…and so much more. It’s free
to join, so go check it out.
Throughout this series, we will be showing
you how to use this contact information and
implement strategies for business growth in
an efficient, time-saving and highly professional manner.
If you are a SalesNexus user you can download 500 free contacts a month. You can even take advantage of
this free offer during the free trial on SalesNexus.
Since some people say that, “2 minutes on LeadFerret is worth 2 hours on LinkedIn.”— you should take a few
minutes to learn more.
Every record in LeadFerret is complete with company information, name, title, address and phone number.
You can search by SIC and NACIS codes. You can search by location in several ways, including a map tool.
www.salesnexus.com
Page ix

10. FEATURED SPONSOR—LEADFERRET.COM
The methods we are showing you in this series will demonstrate how to use this robust interface to grow
your business. In the first eBook, you will learn how to identify your ideal prospect. You may have a geographical territory or there may be a size of business that fits well with your product/service. You can search
in terms of revenue range, industry, department within the company and the title of the individual you
should contact.
You simply plug the demographic details into the LeadFerret system. You get a list of target prospects to
download into SalesNexus. You have spent much less time finding the right type of person and can now
spend more time connecting with high quality prospects and building relationships.
It all fits together with one purpose—to Grow Your Business.
www.salesnexus.com
Page x

11. THE 6 PILLARS
OF EFFECTIVE
SALES MESSAGING
THAT DRIVES GROWTH

12. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
T
here are 6 pillars in our methodology for building a sales strategy that drives growth. However, two of
them have already been covered in detail with eBooks 2 and 3 of this series. Go back and read “Building
a Successful Marketing and Sales Process by Identifying Your Customer’s Pain” and “How to Qualify Sales Leads
and Focus on Sales Growth that’s Profitable” if you have not read those yet.
Sales Messaging
We build our sales messaging on the pillars
of value, qualify, pain, objections, interest
and credibility. If you develop specific messaging for each of those six areas, they can
then become a solid foundation which you
can then build out your entire sales messaging strategy on top of those pillars.
DEFINITION: Sales messaging is what
you are communicating to your prospects. This communication may take
place on a cold call, a prospecting call
or any introduction to the prospect. A phone call or a face-to-face networking event requires a wellthought-out message. Emails are a part of messaging, whether they are a one-to-one email or a
mass email broadcast for marketing purposes.
Sales and marketing are closely aligned. This eBook will address sales messaging, but it could affect your
marketing message.
www.salesnexus.com
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13. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
Value
What we mean by value is how you help your clients. As sales people, we often fall into a rut of talking about
our products and services—sharing what they do. We need to get above that. We are much more valuable
when our message is about how those products or services help the client. That is where we get to a true
level of sales effectiveness.
Value is basically an intangible attribute that transfers from you to your clients. Step back and try to get your
hands around what this means. On a personal level, you deliver value when you are interacting with a prospect and you make them laugh. By making their day brighter you are delivering value. By making the conversation somewhat entertaining you are making someone’s day a little easier. When are a good listener, it may
seem as if you are not giving them anything…you are just being there. The fact that they can talk to you is
delivering value. It is important for you to understand that that same type of value is felt by your prospects.
Value can be many things. Like when you:
• Make someone feel good about interacting with you.
• Help them save time or become more efficient
• Show them ways to automate manual processes to free up time to be more strategic
• Help them make more money or save money.
• Show them how to access valuable information like email addresses from LeadFerret.com
The important thing to remember is that your value is not your product—it is what your product helps your
clients to do or achieve and what you personally help your clients do or achieve.
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14. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
3 Levels of Value
Technical Value
At the lowest level is technical value. Don’t get misled and think about this being only technology. It is simply the level where systems, processes, people exist and typically where improvements can be made. When
you help your prospect to make changes that automate manual processes, this is creating an improvement
at the technical level. You may be improving performance of systems or performance of people. For example, SalesNexus helps to improve the performance of sales people. That is a technical value that SalesNexus
helps its clients realize.
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15. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
Business Value
Technical value typically works its way up to create benefits or value at the business level. Examples of business value are increases in revenue, decreases in costs, and the improvement in the delivery of services.
Continuing with the SalesNexus example, it helps make sales people perform better; it creates more sales
revenue and profitability. That is business value. When you realize both technical and business value, they
combine to impact your prospects on a personal level.
Personal Value
Of course your prospects care about their company—whether they own it or they are a senior manager that
has been working there for years. They probably have a tremendous amount of pride and wear the polo shirt
with the company logo on the side. They care a lot. But they also care about themselves.
It is natural for individuals to be more interested in their own interests more than anything else. Interests
such as career, income, workload, job security, and being able to provide for a family can easily be at the top
of an individual’s priorities. Creating improvements in these areas is how you deliver personal value to your
prospects.
When you deliver both technical and business value, it will typically work its way up to impact people in the
area of bonuses, commissions, recognition, promotions and more. That is how what you sell helps to create
personal value.
To help you to figure out the value you offer, we will provide a 7 step process. You can use this matrix as a
guide to go through these steps. As we go through these steps, we will use an example of inventory management software.
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16. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
Value Identification
1. Step 1: Identify a product, service, or feature that you sell. We will enter one of our products, auto
inventory replenishment.
2. Step 2: Identify what the product does. How does auto inventory replenishment function? It automatically submits orders to vendors based on inventory levels.
3. Step 3: Identify what benefit this function provides at a technical level. What does that mean on a
technical level? It helps decrease the time it takes to place orders.
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17. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
4. Step 4: Identify what business benefit the technical value will lead to. If we decrease time ordering,
what does that mean from a business standpoint? If the business is currently having managers walk
around the store every night doing orders, that step can be eliminated. It decreases the need for
management staffing time and labor costs.
5. Step 5: Identify the personal benefit that can be realized from the technical and business value delivered. What does that mean to me if I am the VP of operations—on a personal level? Currently,
I must review all orders since they are manually created now. I can stop doing this task and spend
more time with my wife and kids.
6. Step 6: Rinse and repeat. We started with a product or feature and mapped out the value that it offers. If we only sell one thing, we’ve just identified the core value we offer. It’s likely that you sell more
than one product or your product has more than one feature. You can use the matrix to repeat the
process for your other products or features.
7. Step 7: Summarize to get to your core value. You may uncover too much information for you to share
in a brief conversation with a prospect. So you can summarize the different columns of data to get to
a single core value. This is what we came up with for this fictional product:
“The auto inventory replenishment software helps companies manage inventory levels and orders.
That leads to improving the ability to decrease inventory and labor cost and improves our prospect’s
compensation potential.”
When we talk about SalesScripter.com later, the program includes a wizard that helps you identify all those
nuggets of information. When you have these value pieces, you can plug them into the wizard to create a list
of value statements. From that list, you can pick the ones that fit your product/service best.
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18. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
Qualifying
The prospect must be qualified in two areas. One is how well they fit with what you have to offer, the other
qualifies them in how likely the prospect is to purchase.
Qualifying is a procedural step in your sales thoroughness. We covered this subject in detail in an earlier eBook in this series. Refer to the third eBook in this series, “How to Qualify Sales Leads and Focus on Sales Growth
that’s Profitable” to get an in-depth look at qualifying.
www.salesnexus.com
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19. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
Messaging is not just what you say to prospects; it is also what you ask. In fact, in early stages of the sales
cycle, you should be asking more questions than talking about yourself and what you offer. A very big part
of your sales messaging is your qualification.
We use a 2-step qualifying process.
Soft Qualifying
When we first talk to a prospect, we are really trying to figure out if it makes sense for us to talk at all. Does
it make sense for us to meet or put time on each other’s calendar? You will ask questions like: What are you
using today? How long have you been using it? How is it working for you? Are you in a contract?
Hard Qualifying
We definitely want to do hard qualifying. You want to know the prospect’s role in the organization. You
may ask: What’s the decision making process? Has this project been budgeted? What is the budget range?
What happens if you don’t make a purchase? Is there a timeline for the purchase?
They are all good questions that need to be asked. You want to ask them when you have your first meeting
or scheduled call. You don’t want to ask hard qualifying questions when you first talk to a prospect.
Structure for Qualifying
•
•
•
•
Need to purchase—separate wants from needs
Authority to purchase—are you talking to the decision maker
Ability to purchase—funding standpoint
Intent to purchase—genuine interest in making the purchase from you
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20. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
Pain
Identify what is not working well for the prospect or could be working better. When you are selling, you need
to know the level of pain. Are things great, good, okay or could be better. If there is not a lot of pain, it could
be hard for the prospect to end up spending money with you. They may take meetings with you. You may be
a super sales person and are so savvy that you get meetings, show demonstrations and the prospect likes
all your fancy features.
If the pain is not at a certain level with their current system, what does
that mean to your sale?
It means that when it
comes time for them to
look at your agreement…
make a purchase…invest
money…make a commitment to move forward…
they might not do that
because there is not
enough pain.
Again, we covered this
part of the sales process
in an earlier eBook. Learn more about uncovering prospect pain in the second eBook, “Building a Successful
Marketing & Sales Process by Identifying Your Customer’s Pain.”
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21. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
There are three levels of pain and they are aligned with the levels of value. At the lowest level is technical
pain—processes, systems and people. They are areas where things are slow, broken, manual processes, lack
of reliability, poor systems or employee performance.
Technical pain works its way up to impact your prospect at the business level in the area of revenue and
costs. For example, SalesNexus may have a prospect that is having sales leads fall through the cracks because they are not effectively worked and tracked. That means missed opportunities. Missed opportunities
mean decreased sales revenue and decreased profit.
Again, the pain works itself up to personal pain. The VP of sales with all those missed sales opportunities
may have annual sales quotas that are missed. They may be out of a job. We know that is very painful and
hits at a very personal level.
Pain isn’t always easy to uncover. Sometimes people don’t want to share what is not working well. There
are things you can do to try to uncover pain though. Here are four of the most common tactics, with very
reasonable things you can do to get the conversation started about pain.
Four Tactics to Uncover Pain
• Rating questions—ask them how they feel about current situation on a scale 1-10
• Give pain examples—point out the experience of pain you’ve found in clients to open dialogue
• Wish list questions—magic wand questions to uncover what they wish for
• Disqualify—observe that things are going well for them with low or no pain….disqualified
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22. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
Objections
Your prospects will give objections. They will use them as mini-stop-signs, especially if you are cold calling
or prospecting. They will throw objections at you to try to slow the call down or end the call. Prospects will
try to take control of the conversation. They can then take it in a direction of their choosing. Objections are
really the prospect’s messaging—but for every objection, you can have a response that is part of your messaging strategy.
Sales people are guaranteed to run up against objections all the time. So if you are not prepared for the common objections, it’s like an athlete suiting up for the game unprepared. Here are a few common objections.
Some of these may look familiar to you:
I’m busy right now…Who are you with?...What is this in regards to? If you are doing outbound cold calling or
prospecting, the question about “What this is in regards to?” is something you will hear all the time. Gatekeepers love this one. They are trying to get you to say something that makes you look like a sales person.
That way they can say they are not interested.
If you directly answer that question, your response might be, “I’m calling to schedule a meeting and see if
you have any needs for what we offer.” That is simply not going to get you anywhere. Instead, have a few
tactics for responding to common objections that have a good chance of keeping the call going. If you just
simply have a canned response for each one of those common objections, you will immediately improve
your results. They may not work every time, but over a large sample of calls, having a prepared response
will help.
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23. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
Handling Responses to Objections
Here are three options you have to handle objections you receive.
Comply
To comply is basically to give in. If they ask you to send information, you respond by just sending them information. The trouble is when they ask for the information simply to get you off the phone. Now you have
spent time carefully crafting an email and attachments when there is no real interest at all.
Overcome
Challenging the objection in an attempt to change their mind is generally not going to work. You are basically trying to sell more aggressively. When prospecting, it’s not time to try to overcome an objection. If you
are on the phone with someone who doesn’t know you, there is not enough time and attention to overcome
an objection. You have about two to five minutes to work with on a cold call.
On the other hand, when you are meeting with the prospect and they have an objection, you might want to
overcome it…or at least talk about it. Open the conversation if it is a genuine objection. If it’s something you
are not going to be able to resolve, you may need to disqualify the prospect.
For example, if they say they want a lifetime warranty and you cannot offer one, you need to talk about it.
Perhaps you might ask, “Do you mind if I ask why you’re asking for a lifetime warranty? We do have better
quality than our competition.” That way you can deal with the objection head on. Do that in a meeting when
you have the prospect’s attention and you have time on their calendar.
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24. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
Redirect
A more effective way to handle objections when prospecting is to redirect the objection. You can move the
conversation to a new, but maybe related area. You are not completely changing the subject, but you are
trying to get the focus away from the objection.
EXAMPLE #1: If you are a salesperson with SalesNexus and get the objection that they are not
interested.
A redirect would be to say, “Okay, I understand. Well, if I could ask you real quick, what you are using today
for email marketing?” They may say they are using Constant Contact. To continue the conversation your response might be, “So that is a separate from your current CRM, right?” There are lots of different directions
you can continue the conversation from there.
Notice that we’re not talking about the fact that they are not interested anymore. We’re talking about their
environment and gathering very valuable information. We now have uncovered some pain because they
have two separate systems. If they go back to saying they are not interested, we might be able to overcome
the objection because we know a little about their pain.
Objections Map
Developing a matrix of how to respond to common objections will give you the best chance of keeping the
call going. You have one column to list all the objections you can anticipate. In the other column, you list the
responses that you have scripted out for a response. That is the goal of an objections map. It is not necessarily for resolving the objection. It is to keep the conversation going. Use this chart as a tool when you are
on the phone making cold calls or prospecting.
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25. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
SalesScripter will build an Objections Map for you.
If you go through the SalesScripter, you will get a
number of responses to the common objections.
EXAMPLE #2: Here is an example of making
a cold call for SalesScripter and a gatekeeper
asks, “What is this in regards to?” Don’t respond with, “I want to schedule a meeting
with the VP of Sales to talk about what they
do in sales messaging.” Instead, respond with
a value statement and say something like “The
reason I am calling is we help VP’s of Sales to
increase lead generation by improving sales
messaging.” This objection response can often
throw the gatekeeper off because it does not
give an answer that they are prepared for. It
may not get past the gatekeeper, but it won’t
shut him out immediately.
The value statement is much harder to object to
because it’s harder for someone to say they don’t
want it. If you say “We help businesses improve the
number of leads.” The prospect is not likely to say that they don’t want leads.
If you respond with a product based answer, it is easy to quickly say that they don’t need it. When you offer
a value to them, it is much easier to keep the conversation going.
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26. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
Building Interest
There is a lot you can do in your sales messaging to build interest and here are a few very practical and easy
to use tactics that you can implement:
Product/Service Description: At a high level you can include
some product or service details showing what it is and what
it does. For example, SalesNexus is a CRM and email marketing program in one system. Even if you are talking about
value, you need to communicate what your product is and
what it does.
Connect Pain with Value: If you are incorporating all of the
pillars, you are communicating the value you offer and you
may be identifying the pain the prospect is having. If you can
connect the value you have to offer with the pain the prospect is having, you stand to get the prospect’s attention and
build interest.
Ways to Build Interest
• High level product/service details
• Connect pain with value
• Communicate ROI
• Explain differentiation
• Share a client story
• Paint a picture of the future state
• Discuss the impact of doing nothing
• Share company facts
Communicate ROI: The main thing that your prospects care about is “What is in it for me?”. Communicating the return on investment and possible the payback period for what they will spend on your product or
service will address this question and build interest. If your product/service costs $100,000, when will they
get $100,000 back from investing in it? Or what is the multiple they will get in three years?
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27. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
Differentiation: Communicating how you are different is extremely powerful. You need to have clarity
around how you differ from your competition and even how you differ from the option to do nothing. Focus
on this to trigger interest and momentum.
Share Client Story: There is nothing more powerful than sharing a story. You can talk all day about what the
product does—but a client story about how they came to you with a challenge and how it was resolved by
your product or service…that has much more power.
Paint a Picture of Future State: To build interest, paint a picture of what the prospect could expect if they
purchase from you by describing a potential future state. For example, if you sold a sales training product,
you could describe the level of improvement and mastery your prospect could achieve by going through
your program. You could paint this picture by describing the increases in sales performance, the increased
compensation, the improvements in their career path and personal life, and more.
Discuss the Impact of doing Nothing: An easy to understand example would be about purchasing flood
insurance. Someone may think that particular type of insurance is not necessary. If the insurance sales person talks about what could happen if there is a bad storm, how often there are freak storms and what cost
they would have to pay if the storm happened to them, they are outlining the impact of not doing anything
or not making a purchase. If the sales person said, “With your current property if there is a flood storm, you
could be out $50-100,000 in damages that you will have to pay out of your pocket. How do you feel about
that expense being a possibility?” This tactic gets the prospect to see the impact of doing nothing and bring
clarity to what can happen without making a change. This can help to build interest.
Share Company Facts: There is a place for you to exercise your bragging rights by sharing facts and details
about your company. Telling the prospect that you have been in business 30 years could build interest. So
could the fact that you don’t use offshore resources or you have won award for customer service.
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28. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
Credibility
Part of your sales messaging can be designed to help establish your credibility. Credibility can help when
trying to get past the gatekeeper who is screening you. While they are talking to you, they will typically try
to determine if you are friend or foe.
A friend is someone that is already doing business with the company or is known to be okay for them to let
in. A foe would be an outsider trying to get in, like a sales person trying to get an appointment. If you are able
to present yourself more as a friend than a foe, you will find gatekeepers and target prospects more open to
talking and let you in. Establishing a little credibility can help with this and here are some ways to do this:
• Name dropping: If you are talking to a gatekeeper—or a target prospect—name drop other people
you have spoken to already. For example, when you say something like “We met with Mary Thomas
in accounting”, this presents an image that you are already working with the business and have a
certain level of credibility. If you have not met with anyone yet, which can often be the case when
prospecting, you can share the people you plan to meet. For example, “We are planning a meeting
with Mary Thomas in accounting but want to connect with the Director of HR prior to that. Can you
point me in the right direction?”
• Story Telling: Just like we talked about under building interest, people will respond to stories about
client experiences with your product/service.
• Lack of Availability: If you have limited quantities, it can lead to the prospect thinking the product/
service may be particularly good.
• Lack of Neediness: People like to think you want their business, but when you desperately need their
business, it is a totally different story. Communicate that you appreciate the opportunity to earn
their business, but desperation will usually kill the opportunity.
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29. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
• Picture of Consensus: Prospects can feel a sense of assurance if you can paint a picture of a scenario
where everybody is buying your product or switching over to your service. Without lying, you can
throw out some data that stimulates the herd mentality. It makes people think that you are okay and
establishes you as credible.
REMEMBER: You have access to a lot of names, with useful contact data in Lead Ferret. Using this
information can make it easy to ask for the right person or to use drop names for credibility. Most of
Lead Ferret’s subscribers access information free and only have to pay if they want to download the
data. For SalesNexus clients, they can download 500 contact records each and every month—even
during the free trial period. No brainer—right?
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30. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
Connecting to the Magic 5
In the first eBook of this series, we talked about the power of the Magic 5. It is important that we tie this
information about the pillars back to that concept here. Knowing the six pillars of a sales stategy allows you
to create a powerful marketing campaign using email.
A quick review of how this model works:
• Create 5 emails that focus on different pains that your products and services address. (Customer
pain is covered in depth in the second eBook of this series.)
• When people click on the links in the emails to read those articles, it triggers a sales response.
• When sales people call the people who
have opened the links, they use a series
of qualifying questions to determine if
the prospect is ready to purchase soon
or needs to be nurtured over time. (Remember, he third eBook explains how
to develop qualifying questions.)
• A second campaign using frequently
asked questions (FAQ) is sent to those
that don’t meet the criteria as a highly
qualified buyer. These are based on
questions that people typically ask
before they buy. It helps the prospect
move toward a purchase.
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31. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
Content Campaign Based on Prospect Pain
Earlier we talked about how a prospect for SalesNexus may be losing sales opportunities because of not
having a system for working and tracking leads. The Magic 5 would start with a content piece addressing
specific prospect pain. An email subject line might ask if sales leads are falling through the cracks. Inside the
email, a link would be available to take the prospect to the content piece.
Using LeadFerret.com, it is quick and easy to send that email out to 500 or more sales managers. When
someone opens the email, it is the first sign they may be interested. When they click the link to the content
piece, they are—more or less—raising their hand to say they are interested. It becomes a great opportunity
for a conversation with a sales person at SalesNexus.
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32. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
Additional Resources
A lot of information has been covered in this eBook in a very short period of time. We aren’t going to leave
you without additional resources if you are interested in learning more.
In the book, The Cold Calling Equation, each of these pillars discussed in
this eBook is covered in more detail with a chapter dedicated to each one.
There are actually 20 chapters in the book, so go ahead and get yours on
Amazon.
You can also take advantage of a 10-week Sales Prospecting Training Program from SalesScripter. Send an email to info@salesscripter.com.
SalesScripter is a web-based tool that asks questions to extract key details about the products or services you sell. It digs deep into questions
about the company you represent, the value you offer, the pain you resolve and the prospects that are likely to purchase from you. The details
input into SalesScripter are plugged into a library of scripts, templates and
sales tools.
The SalesScripter is actually completely aligned with the pillars discussed in this eBook and in The Cold
Calling Equation. If you read through this and think you would like to get your information together in the
areas discussed—value, pain, objections, interest, qualifying, etc., then go to SalesScripter. It provides a
wizard that will take you through questions and will help you get all of your information together. When
you complete the scripter, you will get documents outlining your sales messaging. You will get a list of value
statements to use, a list of qualifying questions, an objections map, building interest points, and more.
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33. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
Again, the SalesScripter tool works well with Lead Ferret. For example, as you complete the questions, one of
the documents will describe your Ideal Prospect. Size, region, industry, title and other important details are
ready for you to use. Plug the details of the ideal prospect into Lead Ferret and get a list of people to contact.
The documents are produced by the answers you provide in the web-based tool. Each report is completely
custom tailored to your situation.
Some of the questions in this wizard are somewhat thought-provoking, but most of questions are really
straight forward and can be answered very quickly. You will get documents that connect your value with the
prospects pain, differentiation and ROI statements, cold call scripts, voice mail scripts, first meeting scripts
and so much more. You will also get both soft and hard qualifying questions—plus an objections map. Content marketing topics are included to make it easy for you to implement the Magic 5 process of growing your
business.
The documents are
created as pdf docs
that can be shared
with your team too.
Use it now—Free!
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34. THE 6 PILLARS OF EFFECTIVE SALES MESSAGING THAT DRIVES GROWTH
Next Steps
We hope that you’ve benefited from our ebook! We truly want to help you take your business to the next
level. If you have questions about how these ideas can best be applied in your business, we’re only a phone
call away! Really! Call or email and we’ll do our best to help however we can.
All the best,
Craig Klein
CEO, SalesNexus.com
713.862.0001
Free Live Training
For hands on instruction on how to write emails, create email templates and build campaigns, join our
weekly live training session on Wednesdays at 3pm ET. http://support.salesnexus.com/training/
Sales Growth Webinars and ebooks
In addition to this ebook, we’ve published 6 webinars and ebooks. Access them all, completely free, here
http://www.salesnexus.com/sales-growth-webinar-series/
30 Day Free Trial
Start your Free, 30 day trial of SalesNexus and transfer 500 LeadFerret.com contacts to email to begin identifying qualified leads for your business today. http://www.salesnexus.com/free-trial/
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