The Believability Spectrum in Sales

Did you know according to Gong that mentioning ROI in cold emails DECREASES success rates by 15% or even more?

There’s two reasons for this.

1. You don’t know their benchmark. What do they think about this topic (ie. artificial intelligence) before you?

2. You’ve done nothing to earn their trust.

For simplicity, let’s use decreasing no shows for our example, although AI is a VERY good example of this topic in healthcare.

Scenario

You’re a salesperson at a company that helps reduce no shows. You’ve been taught that the financial impact of reducing no-shows is a net positive for healthcare organizations because more completed appointments equals more revenue and that for every appointment you help save that you’re bringing the organization an extra $150 for your ideal customer profile (ICP).

You develop a masterful email sequence about how you’ll help a medical practice bring in an extra $50,000 by reducing their no-show rate from 6% to 2% through your magical appointment reminder and rescheduling software.

And it’s not working….

Why isn’t working? Let’s skip over the obvious reasons like…

1. They already have a vendor

2. They’ve heard this from other vendors

3. They have other more important priorities

4. Their no show rate already is super low….

There’s another reason that making bold claims too early in your relationship with your market is hurting you. It’s perceived as bullsh*t. You’re not going to magically change their patients behavior 5x better than every other vendor they’ve tried.

What should I do?

Mirror and lead. This tactic isn’t just for speaking. It’s for gaining trust.

If someone doesn’t believe you’re no show reduction success, your response shouldn’t be to give them the cold hard facts of why they should trust you tomorrow. Your goal is to move them just a smidge to the right. More often than not this comes from gaining a better understanding of why they stand where they do today on the matter.

This is why discovery is so important. If you’re talking to a practice manager and you’ve asked:

1. What’s your no show rate today?

2. What appointment types have the highest rates?

3. What methods do you offer to cancel, reschedule, and self-schedule?

4. What have you experimented with in the past?

When a practice manager has told you all this information, it starts to sound believable when you can give best practice recommendations and talk about where you’ve seen similar stories elsewhere.

An extremely common example of this is the healthtech vendor’s website who says we integrate with EVERY EHR. We all know you don’t and you’ve immediately moved me the wrong direction on the trust spectrum.

I promise you that communicating to a practice manager that you’ve heard how difficult it is to integrate with eClinicalWorks but you’ve had success with a couple customers is a better answer than trying to say you’re team has cracked the code on every EHR.

Not as far to the right as you probably thought…

See, you don’t actually need them to completely trust you with all your logic and evidence and case studies. All you need to do is slowly nudge them from point A to point B so they trust you just enough to buy from you.

This is why your marketing team is so important. Yes, salespeople. Your marketing team needs more credit. All the touchpoints help with gaining trust. The blog sharing a customer story. Your demo. A PDF sharing a testimonial. The ads they get after doing a demo with you. Overtime all these touch points slowly help them believe your stories of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Stop trying to be the perfect vendor. It’s not believable. It doesn’t make your prospect think they’re getting an honest partner.

The line you need to reach for “Okay, I’ll buy from you.” probably isn’t as far to the right as you think you need to get.