Are you a sales professional that loves digging in and solving client’s problems? It’s easy for the conversation to go off the rails when you’re on a roll and have a great path to solve a client’s problem. Here’s a sales best practice to keep your conversation with a client or prospect focused and on-track…and it will also make you look whip smart.
I learned this simple acronym from Brad Helmer more than 10 years ago and still use it today. When met with almost any scenario, just remember to S.C.O.P.E. it.
SCOPE: Situation, Consequences, Obstacles, Preferences, Expected Results
- Situation: Brief assessment of the current state of a problem (e.g. your sales team is not converting leads into meetings and opportunities.)
- Consequences: Not addressing this situation will lead to negative consequences (e.g. your team will miss its quarterly revenue goals due to lack of pipeline.)
- Obstacles: Candidly asses the conditions/processes/people that are blocking the team’s progress (e.g. the website is attracting too many prospects with too small of a budget.)
- Preferences: The goal/preference is to have the following positive outcome (e.g. a better content marketing strategy with content that enables self-selection will enable only qualified leads to progress.)
- Expected Results: Upon reconciling the obstacles and mapping to preferences, you can achieve your goals (e.g. SQLs are flowing and we’re hitting plan now that our team’s time is focused only on large qualified deals.)
It’s not rocket-science. It’s just a handy way to guide you through a decision-making process. Now take that shot of SCOPE and get out there and solve problems.
