How to Use Assignment Selling When Selling Inbound
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Assignment selling is the best way we have found to keep prospects engaged during the sales process at our agency.
The purpose of assignment selling is to have the prospect do work alongside you during the sales process. This proves they’re committed to finding a solution and allows you to move forward towards a solution together.
We must start by giving credit where it is due. The first place we heard of an agency using assignment selling and using it well was The Sales Lion.
Marcus wrote an article that you can check out here going into great detail on what assignment selling is and how it has helped him sell everything from pools to inbound.
If you are new to the concept of assignment selling, I recommend reading Marcus’s article.
Our goal here is to break down the actual assignments we give clients in between calls to help move them through the sales process when selling GamePlans and retainers.
Assignments Given
An assignment should be given at the end of each call in your agency’s sales process. The simplest assignment is to book time for the next call. Try to have them commit to a time while they are on the phone with you towards the end of the call.
Let’s break down each assignment by calling.
Connect Call — The connect call is the first time you talk with the new prospect. Your goal during this call is to build a relationship and figure out if the prospect is the right fit to work with your agency.
During this call, you should be asking questions around their company structure to figure out who the decision-maker is for forming a partnership. If that person is not the person you are speaking with, the assignment is to get the decision-maker on the qualifying call.
Qualifying Call — Now you begin to dig in and really get a sense of how well you and the prospect will work together. During this call, you are covering things such as goals, timeframe, budget.
In order to help move the prospect along in the sales process, you need to prove value. The assignment gives at the end of this call is for the prospect to fill out the Inbound Revenue Calculator and send you the results.
This helps the prospect understand the true value in terms of dollars that a partnership can provide.
Solution Call — Nine times out of ten the solution that we present is to move forward with an Inbound Marketing GamePlan. It is the natural place to begin a partnership and is an easy, tangible product for the prospect to wrap their minds around.
During this call, we will present the GamePlan to them as the solution and receive verbal confirmation that they would like to move forward. If we receive verbal confirmation, the assignment is for the prospect to review the contract ahead of the next call when we go through it together.
If we do not receive verbal confirmation, the assignment is to review our GamePlan sales deck which breaks down in greater detail what they are receiving, and to send any questions ahead of our next call.
Creating assignments for Your Agency
Sales processes aren’t the same for every agency. We have found that our process works well for selling Inbound Marketing GamePlans and retainers. I am a firm believer that a large part of the reason it works so well is because of the assignments we create along the way.
If your process is different, that’s fine. Come up with creative ways to build prospect engagement through your sales process.
If you have other ideas feel free to share them below!
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