How to Sell CAS - Learn from My Mistakes

Read Time: 6:45 minutes

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Welcome back to part two of a four-part series on how to sell CAS.

1. Pre-sales call

2. Discovery call

3. Post discovery call

4. The evolution of my selling process

We will discuss the evolution of my selling process in this issue.

Sales have come naturally, but it took me years to figure out why. Although selling comes naturally, it still has been challenging. Building your sales process takes time, but you can go faster than I did by learning from my mistakes.

Here are my five mistakes to learn from:

1. Not asking for a commitment

2. No structure

3. Selling what you think your client wants

4. Not talking to the decision-maker

5. Spending too much time creating the perfect proposal

Let's dive in.

Not asking for a commitment

As I discussed, I have wasted a ton of time sending follow-up “FU” emails into the deep blue web, never to hear back from a prospect. The biggest reason is not getting a commitment on a call or meeting.

This is one of the easiest things you can do to save time. You simply need to book the next call or step in your process on the current call or meeting. Of course, only some prospects will commit, but this is a sign that the prospect is no longer interested in what you are selling.

If a prospect does not want to book the next step, this is an excellent time to ask, “What is causing the pause” or “What concerns or questions do you have about the next steps.” You can avoid one of those unanswered FU emails by asking one of these questions. And you will have better insights into why the prospect does not want to buy from you. Either way, it is a win in my book.

No Structure

When I first started selling, I would wing every meeting. This caused meetings to take longer than they needed to. It also caused me to spend additional time asking follow-up questions.

Here are the steps that I would do starting over to speed up the sales process:

• First, research the company via their website. You can get a general sense of the complexity of a business by looking at the website. Two things I look at are service offerings and team. A company with multiple service offerings equals a more complex financial situation. The same goes for team size. More people and more leadership members equal more complexity.

• Next, create an agenda and a list of structured questions. This will allow you to be efficient during your meeting and help you remember items you must capture to assemble a proposal. I cover a few of my questions in this issue.

• Then, create an onboarding form. A form that allows you to capture even more information upfront to speed up the process. I also use my form to screen companies that might not be a fit.

Yes, all these items are straightforward and basic. But, most people, including myself, overlook the basic thinking that the answer must be complex.

Selling what you think your clients want

I started selling what I thought the client needed rather than figuring out what the client wanted. This made the sales cycle longer because I needed to convince the client why they needed what I was selling.

Now I spend a reasonable amount of time listening to prospects. This allows me to tie back what I heard into my services. Addressing what I heard the prospect say makes selling a lot easier.

I constantly remind myself to bite my tongue and shut the fr*nt d@or up 😜. This works well with your kids and spouse too. LISTEN and stop trying to solve.

After you have started listening better, the next step is doing Voice of Customers (“VOCs”). Better yet, have someone else do VOCs. Getting feedback on what your client values most about your services improves everything and everyone.

Not talking to the decision-maker

Initially, I would tell the client’s bookkeeper all these amazing things I could help them with. The bookkeepers would always be excited, but rarely would anything happen. I could not figure out why. Then, my training in Action Selling made me realize that I wasn't talking to the decision-maker.

In SMBs, figuring out who makes the decision maker is easy because it is usually the owner. In larger companies, this can be tricker. Rather than guessing, ask, “Can you walk me through your buying process? Who needs to be involved in making this decision?”.

Getting the people that make the decisions involved sooner rather than later will speed up your sales cycle. And will result in fewer FUs to the deep blue web.

Spending too much time creating the perfect proposal

I might sound like a broken record, but doing assessments was a game-changer. I vividly remember trying to sell an ERP system to a prospect. I spent around two days trying to help the ERP team close a deal. I gave away a ton of free process improvement knowledge. The only thing I got in return was explaining to my boss why my charge hours were down that week without a new client to show for it.

In addition, you could have the perfect discovery process and never come close to putting together an ideal proposal. There are too many unknowns.

This is why I love assessments so much. It allows you to get paid to peek behind the curtain. Plus, it is a trial project for the prospect to see if they like working with you. And the same goes for you. So that is a win-win, in my book.

I recommend picking one of these mistakes and implementing a part of it today. Then slowly add in the next part that you see fit. Remember to replay your calls. The replays will flush out which one you should start doing next.

Choose Your Own Adventure 🚶‍♂️🗺

🙏 Thanks to Jesse Buhl, for sharing The CAS Cache!

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📈📚 Increasing your price is the most effective way to grow your company profitably and have more profit with fewer customers. Easy said than done, right? Read how Disney accomplished more profit with fewer visitors by clicking here.

Thanks for reading, Luke Templin!

P.S. There are 3 ways I can help you grow your CAS offerings when you are ready:

1. Automate your CAS offering with daily financial digest on autopilot

2. Mini-courses on CAS

3. Book a 1-hour CAS consulting call