Speed equals sales

Today’s prospects are handling hundreds of emails, dozens of phone calls, and several meeting each day. They don’t have time to do an in-depth analysis on every single item they’re working on. That’s the downside.

The upside is they are so incredibly busy that if you can answer questions, return calls, and schedule resources faster than your competitor, you can save them time… and time is more valuable than money in today’s economy. So it stands to reason that if you can save your prospects time, you will win more business.

To capitalize on that advantage, you need a killer app. What is a killer app? Here’s the definition from Wikipedia:

In marketing terminology, a killer application (commonly shortened to killer app) is any computer program that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology, such as computer hardware, gaming console, software, or an operating system. A killer app can substantially increase sales of the platform on which it runs.

This has nothing to do with software. Although the iPhone has a killer app (Siri), so does Zappo’s (customer service), and Walmart (low prices). In today’s hectic sales world, your killer app should be speed.

Imagine if you needed a plumber or a moving company. You call on Monday and customer service schedules an appointment for Thursday. The salesperson meets with you for an hour and then moves through the rest of their daily appointments. On Friday, the salesperson goes through their process to get pricing, and after engaging their resources, they email pricing the following Tuesday. You’ll probably receive a follow-up call a week after the email seeing if “everything looked good” on the quote.

What started as a pressing issue to you was just relegated to mediocrity by the salesperson. Instead of having the same sense of urgency as you, they went about their business at their own speed. You needed immediacy and instead had to wait 1–2 weeks to get an answer.

Now you know how your prospect feels.

One Moore Thing: Every business is different, but in most instances, speed can be a competitive advantage that can increase your win rate by 10–20%. You just need to determine the best way to streamline your sales and customer service processes to ensure you are faster than your competitor.