About this Episode
Ask your average salesperson the following question: Are there certain questions you find yourself answering on every single sales call?
Chances are, this will be met by a laugh or an eye-roll or a sigh of despair.
Yes, salespeople field the same questions from customer after customer after customer.
Assignment selling can help change all that.
Assignment selling is the act of using content during the sales process to address major objections and questions your buyers have — often before they come up during a meeting.
The idea was developed by Marcus Sheridan more than a decade ago when he was running his swimming pool company River Pools and Spas.
Marcus was writing a lot of marketing content for his website that was bringing in tons of traffic — and a good number of leads. He decided to dig through the data to see what conclusions he could draw about his customers.
Marcus realized he had two very different groups of people requesting sales calls — and he was seeing dramatically different close rates depending on which camp someone came from.
The first group had only viewed a handful of pages on his website. They had a closing rate of around 25%.
The second group had viewed an average of 30 pages of his website and had a closing rate of around 80%.
In short, the more well-informed the buyer is, the more likely that buyer will close.
Marcus took this lesson and applied it more broadly. In the time since, he’s taught salespeople all around the world to use content to get questions out of the way ahead of time.
So, rather than answering the question when it comes up in a meeting, a salesperson can say, “I know you’re likely going to have questions about X. I’m going to send you some resources that explain it thoroughly so you’ll feel more well-informed going into our next meeting.”
This is the beauty of assignment selling: better sales conversations, more attention paid to buyer needs, and deeper trust built between the prospect and the company.
Connect with Marcus
Marcus Sheridan is a writer, speaker, and business expert who’s worked with companies all over the world. Marcus is the author of They Ask, You Answer and co-author of The Visual Sale.
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Keep Learning
Watch: What is ‘Assignment Selling’? Using Content to Close Deals Faster
Read: 5 Real-Life Sales Scenarios Where You Need Assignment Selling (w/ Templates)
Learn: The 7 Most Common Sales Problems — And How To Solve Them
