As salespeople, we need to keep in mind that no one likes to be sold anything but everyone loves to be helped. Therefore, it’s important to understand your prospect’s ROI and how to use that when positioning your product or service in the form of a solution that can help them solve a problem or address a challenge. One of the biggest aspects of sales is figuring out how you can impact an individual or company to maximize their ROI, so it’s critical that during the sales process you uncover that information (and are able to quantify it whenever possible).

At BDU, for example, we work with individuals, companies and organizations to help drive sales and boost revenue. Let’s say that one of our prospects has a company with an average sale of $50,000 and we can help them increase their sales and gain six new accounts through our work together. If we can understand exactly what their ROI will be, we can then illustrate how their investment in our services will pay for itself over and over again.

Your prospect’s ROI might not be an increase in something such as sales or revenue, but it could also be a protection against having something decrease, like lost investments or turnover. For example, if you offer managed services and you know they’ll stand to lose a certain amount in revenue and productivity should their technology go down, you can then position your services in the context of solving that problem.

Not sure how to uncover your prospect’s ROI and position yourself in the context of a solution? Try asking questions such as:

• “If we were to help you in this area, what would be the revenue goal you’d like to achieve?”
• “If we were to increase your close ratio by 5%, what impact could that have on your annual revenues?”
• “If we could get this product out to market one month earlier, what might be the impact on market share and market penetration?”

By having a conversation with your prospects, asking questions to uncover key information and gaining an understanding of their ROI, you can then set yourself up to be in the best position possible to gain their business!