Because an assessment tool is so engaging, it can be used at every step of the sales process.
Essentially, an assessment tool is a versatile tool that can be designed to evaluate specific situations and guide the prospect through a customized line of inquiry based upon their answers to previous questions. This process helps the prospect have a better understanding of the problem at hand and the type of solution s/he needs.
Here’s how these tools can be leveraged at every step of the sales process.
Top of the Funnel
At the top of the funnel, you can help identify pains and where those pains reside. Are they:
- Financial?
- Organizational?
- Technological?
Your prospect can clarify the problem and what impact it has:
- On their industry
- On their business
- On their own customers
- On management
- On staff
These answers illustrate what will happen to the company if it doesn’t make a change.
Furthermore, you can determine what changed the status quo or caused the priority shift that made the prospect actively seek out a solution.
For example, the prospect’s company may be attempting to do something outside of their historical core competencies. If there are financial restrictions, they may be looking for a way to do more with less. The hierarchy may be flattening out in a management shake-up, or the industry is being disrupted by new technology.
Possibly they need some innovation that they don’t have the internal resources to implement.
Middle of the Funnel
Assessment tools are just as functional in the middle of the sales funnel where the lead is beginning to make a list of solutions and lock down the best alternatives. This is also where a value calculator comes into play.
Leads now have a good idea of what is required to fix the problem and have determined a ballpark price from research. Now they want to see if the solution is worth the price and what the next steps should be.
You can design the assessment tool to provide a series of questions that shows the value buyers could receive from your solution. It can also narrow the list of requirements needed to resolve a particular problem, guiding future product changes.
Now you know the value buyers are assigning to your type of solution, plus you have information on the solutions under consideration. From this you can build customer-specific offerings that are the best fit for each buyer.
Bottom of the Funnel
By the time buyers reach this stage, they are ready to select the finalist from a short list of companies and solutions.
They know exactly what problem they are solving and how your offering helps them do that. They can clearly compare their current state to a planned future state because they can work with specifics that are relevant to their situation.
As the final gateway to making a purchase, they want to know return on investment and total cost of ownership.
An assessment tool can easily be used alongside ROI and TCO tools to create a visualization of the new process.
