Learning about your Prospects is key to using Fear to close deals.

By Steven K. Haught, MBA

The underlying rationale for ‘fear-based selling’ is the idea that you the vendor should help your prospect find investment funds even when discretionary or programmed spending appears to have (at least temporarily) dried up. 

In a post-COVID world, how can sales professionals apply this tactic in their  everyday selling?

It starts with being assertive in your communication with prospects and learning about their business.  What keeps them up at night?  The systems and processes scheduled for replacement and upgrading before the pandemic will continues to be an issue after the pandemic if changes are not made.  How long can the prospect afford to go without making a needed change?  Salespeople must know what their prospects should be doing right now to remain competitive and leaders in their market niche.

One thing every company will be doing in the next several months is cutting operating overhead, and discretionary planned investment will be the first to get chopped out of very fluid budgets.

Companies you have served for years will be cutting and postponing large expenditures.  When that happens, you will have to wait for their cycle, a year or more, before that planned investment will be added back to the budget.

You have to sell your products and services now, so what do you do when everyone is chopping and trimming for survival?

First… know what keeps your prospects and clients up at night, what are they fretting over.  Now is the time to use that knowledge framed as a ‘fear’ to get their attention.

Here’s where the unique application of the knowledge you gain in your research blended with the information you have from conversations with your prospects/clients… will enable you to frame what you know into a statement of what the client ‘should be concerned about’ above and beyond what they already think they know.

They have chopped the budget based on what they already know… if you want to be selling and closing deals in this tough economic time, then you need to find that ‘fear’ they have not yet come to know and understand, and present it as a threat to their business ‘if they wait.’

Trust me, sales management and sales professionals must be learning everything you can about your prospects businesses to effectively use ‘fear-based closing tactics’ or your deals will languish in a long cycle before it comes up again in the budget. Here’s an example of how this might look in practical application.

Consider a large financial institution that utilizes separate risk-management systems for credit cards, mortgages, commercial lending, equity investment products, fixed income, commodities, and derivatives, etc.  Each product line has a separate set of performance data and analytics.  What’s the problem with that approach?  Nothing really, unless something like another pandemic shocks the market to a standstill.  

Problem… the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.  Managers across the company were failing to look at risk in a comprehensive and integrated way. So here’s YOUR MESSAGE to this prospect—something like this–“are you aware that a risk-management failure in one area (say, home mortgages) would have direct consequences for the risk exposures in other areas?” Then  ASK a critical question… “have you insulated your company and all divisions so you won’t have a catastrophic failure due to siloed data?”  Then MAKE a statement that will resonate all the way to the CEO’s office… “maybe what’s needed immediately is a way to bring your risk positions from all operating units together into a single data and analysis view?”  By revealing the scale of the threat and the opportunity in insulate against the threat, YOU will be able to get their attention, hold it, and begin the process of closing the deal on your schedule.

While the pandemic has been disruptive, and frustrating for everyone, it is also the best opportunity you might have to close business.  Exploit the ‘fears’ that are beginning to emerge for businesses as they survey their operations and plan for the ‘next one.’  In your research FIND areas within the businesses you target and what kinds of disruptions they have experienced. How costly were they over the three-month shutdown period?  Once you know what those pain points are, then you can frame your solutions to insulate critical processes within the business against a similar future threat.

Here’s a Statement that will resonate and be repeated to the CEO/CFO:  “Many prospects and clients, just like you,  have not been previously troubled by the lack of “fill in the blank” but now with pandemic threats, and other forms of business interruption, can you afford not to protect your business before the next ‘thing’ hits the market?”  Very few business owners and CEOs will be able to ignore the rationale you construct from the knowledge you uncover in your learning process.

This scenario, while only for illustration purposes, could be ‘fear-based selling’ at its finest.  YOU the vendor identified a process that was critical for customers in the current business environment, developed a compelling point of view on how it was NOW a threat and what that meant in terms of costs, and then connected the problem to a solution that YOU the vendor can provide. 

How does this scenario differ from the way you sell today? Let’s assume your organization has already moved away from product pushing to solution selling, and the process begins with a customer’s problem rather than with your offering’s features. 

The approach of ‘fear-based’ selling is more challenging to the customer’s thinking.  You are putting them in a corner, provoking them to take action, to essentially ‘face their fears’ and at least consider the information you have brought to their attention. 

Instead of aligning your sales pitches with a company’s prevailing outlook, the revealed and well worded ‘fear’ provides a new angle on the situation, and one that management cannot ignore. 

With the pandemic’s impact, companies are thinking about cost cutting as the primary means of limiting threats.  While that does work, there are some things that even cost cutting can’t protect against. 

YOU as a sales pro must know what those threats can be, frame them with carefully chosen words, rehearse your presentation till its your second language and then lay it in front of your prospect.  

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