There are three things critical to sales success:

• Knowing what the prospect wants, and needs

• Knowing clearly what benefit, what RESULTS your prospect will get if he does buy, and make it measurable. Help him find the VALUE you bring to the him.

• Knowing what the consequence is if your prospect doesnt act right now, and making that measurable. Help him discover the COST of not acting.

To buy from you your prospect has to act. He has to stop standing still, stop the procrastination, and move forward. To get your prospect to move forward, help him find the value of moving forward, help your prospect find the value of buying from you. There is also a consequence, and a cost of not acting. You just have to help your prospect find both of those, why he should move forward, and why he just CANT stand still.

Im going to spend most of the time in this article talking about the consequence of not acting. Ive already covered the benefits and measurable results of acting in other articles. (Check out 30 Seconds to Explosive Networking and Sales to find your measurable results and most powerful statement.)

The benefit of acting: Lets visualize that there is $1M in gold setting in the corner of the room, your prospect is standing in the middle of the room. If he decides to move, to go to the corner he'll get a $1M benefit from acting. Help your prospect see that as the value of buying from you.

However, there are a LOT of prospects that can see the gold and find reasons not to act. The benefits can be seen as too much risk, or just the fear that they will appear stupid if they get there and cant get it back, or find that it is really fools gold.

In other words, there are a LOT of people that still wont act after seeing huge benefits. People are born procrastinators. Im sure some really good salespeople have laid out some pretty good reasons to buy from them and still didnt get their prospects to act.

So, what will cause them to act? Help your prospect find their COST of not acting.

We have to help the prospect find what might happen to him if he doesnt act, and we have to help him find the COST of that inaction. As a business coach, for my clients, that is usually overhead. The overhead eats them alive while they are saying they cant afford to do their marketing, or they cant afford to hire me. Ive seen clients spend $30,000 while saying they cant afford to spend $3,000 on marketing that would have generated $100K by the end of the month. The benefit was $100K in less than 30 days, yet they still couldnt find a reason to act. However, they found out later that it cost them $30,000 while they were procrastinating. If only someone had shown them that cost they might not have been concerned about spending $3,000.

Lets use another analogy. Weve already talked about the $1M in gold, and that didnt work.

So what is the consequence of not acting?

When you are helping your prospect find the cost of not acting, DO NOT assume that the consequence is not getting $1M. There is a negative impact for inaction, and sometimes a VERY LARGE impact. That is your job to find it.

Back to our analogy. While standing in the middle of the room I can see $1M in the corner, so I have to move to get it. However, if Ive decided, for whatever reason, that I dont want to move, or I am afraid to move, then what would cause me to move if that $1M wont. Obviously there has to be something that will COST me to stand still, and COST me really big.

Imagine that there is a MACK truck bearing down on you while you stand there. You wont stand there for long. It is likely that you will jump out of the way, QUICKLY, and might just jump into my arms.

Do you see how visual that is? Your prospects may have some things that could be slightly painful if they continue standing still, and not acting. But, once you find THEIR MACK truck, that will be REALLY painful, they will jump. fast, and all you have to do is be there to catch them and make their landing soft. They will love you for it.

So, where is the MACK truck bearing down on your prospect?

Now help your prospect see it coming.