“I’m a speed guy,” says business strategist Simon Severino. “I’m looking for the moment that’s real and how I can get there quickly.”
This works across the board. “As an investor, for example, I want to double my net asset value as swiftly as possible. In my business, I ask how quickly we can double revenue. The direct path is to find the moment of truth for the buyer. What do they really need? How can we connect? De-risk? Get to that point where they really get how what I am offering will change their life.”
Severino is the creator of the Strategy Sprints method. “At Sprints, we say, ‘You move forward in the dark.’ You don’t stop. You collect information. That information will be on your skin and you learn, learn, learn.”
THE MAGIC THREE
In sales, that journey into the dark requires three key levers: increase your win rate, optimize pricing power, and increase sales velocity. “If you increase each of these by only 25%, you double your overall revenue.”
Win rate is the low hanging fruit, Severino says, “and you can bump your sales quickly. First thing you do is cut your talk time on sales calls down to 28%. Use AI to track it. Go Obama-style – ask a powerful question and then silence. Let THEM do the work. Get them to reveal what matters to them. What’s real for them, not for you.”
Then, increase trust. “With the advent of AI and more and more tech, personal trust is now everything. Tell them you’re taking notes – in fact, show your notes if you can. It lets them know you are truly listening.”
Severino advises that after you visualize in notes what they are saying, you summarize it by reflecting back their top three points.
“Hold off on giving a price,” he warns. “Stay in the journey until they vocalize a feeling, until they are what I call ‘in the body.’ By this I mean, wait until their body ‘talks.’ They will say something like, ‘I’m tired of failing or underperforming,’ or ‘It’s exhausting’ to keep doing what they've been doing, or ‘I feel guilty about letting my family down.’”
The body lets you know you’ve hit the second stage of a good sales call, Severino says, moving into frustration.
“You don’t talk price until stage three, which is ‘importance’ – how important your solution is to effectuate change.
“It’s essential that you do these steps in the right order, asking powerful questions in the right order. Then you’ve got your sale.”
OLD SCHOOLS, BUS STOPS AND TAKING A BREATH
How else can you get to a potential customer’s moment of truth?
“A strategic series of emails. Some people say it’s old school, that no one reads email, but it’s still the key moneymaker,” Severino insists, “although we are also experimenting with WhatsApp on top of email.”
Random, ill-thought-out emails will get you nowhere.
“You’ve got to pick up a reader at their ‘bus stop’ and challenge their core resistant beliefs and install more favorable beliefs. For instance, they might believe ‘I don’t need marketing, having a great product is enough.’ You have to install an idea, like, ‘Sure, but if they don’t know about your product, they can’t buy it!’”
Identify the resisting false belief and focus the next three emails on shifting that belief with stories, proof, and examples.
Severino insists that none of this is guesswork. You have to put yourself into a state so that you are receptive to the truths of a potential customer.
“I do breath work to reset my inner state before a call. I bring myself to neutral so I’m open to whatever is coming. This way I can encounter another person according to who they are – their DiSC [personality] profile; if they are fast paced, or slow, if I should drive, or let them drive if they need to; whether I should even talk about a sale on this call or allow there to be a whole other session or two.
“I stay open,” Severino says, “and that’s the core of our entire success. Not pounding the customer with what I happen to believe is true, but to create the optimal environment for them to tell me exactly the truths they hold that make purchasing my solution exactly what they need.”
Written by Adam Gilad
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