The SNAP Selling Toolkit from Jill Konrath

People today are busier than ever before. Despite the fact that technology has made life so much easier for us, we live in a culture that loves being busy, so it’s not likely that people will be slowing down anytime soon.

With most people constantly feeling frazzled and distracted, it’s hard to gain the attention of prospects to sell our products and services. Thankfully, Jill Konrath has set out to provide a solution to this problem in her book SNAP Selling: Speed Up Sales and Win More Business with Today’s Frazzled Customers.

“SNAP Selling” is a formula that you can model when approaching your persona with your product or service. SNAP is a loose acronym that’s explained below:

• S -- Keep it simple. The easier you make the decision-making process for your persona, the more successful you’ll be.

• N -- Be invaluable.There are too many similar products and services in the marketplace, what you bring to the relationship is crucial.

• A -- Always align. You have to stay relevant to what your client or customer is doing right now or they won’t want to make time for you.

• P -- Raise priorities. You have to create a sense of urgency for your product or service or your persona will keep putting it off.

Because people are busy and the average customer (B2C or B2B) is more savvy to marketing tactics than ever before -- prospects naturally have their guard up when approached by a company.

They’re immediately trying to decide if what you're offering is worth their time even hearing about, the hassle of implementing it, and finally, if what you offer is the best option available.

This book will show you how to get in your persona’s head and address all of those questions quickly and if you’ve done everything correctly, they’ll feel that they made their own conclusions about you without your influence.

It sounds like manipulation, but really it’s just smart marketing psychology that addresses the most common concerns in a purchasing decision at the right time.

It sounds like manipulation, but really it’s just smart marketing psychology that addresses the most common concerns in a purchasing decision at the right time.

The SNAP Sales Toolkit

The SNAP sales toolkit allows you to understand your buyer persona, their decision-making process, and how to apply the SNAP methodology.

Understand How Frazzled Customers Think

People today have busy schedules and they’re always looking for ways to fit more activities into smaller windows of time. This might have positive effects on productivity, but it also makes people more frazzled.

As a result, people have become more:

• Anxious -- People want to get to the bottom line immediately to decide if your product or service (or your pitch for that matter) is worth their time.

• Distracted -- Some prospects will continue to type away while they’re on the phone with you or they might appear to be listening, but they’ll be in another world in their mind thinking about something else they have to do.

• Resistant to Complexity -- People are wary of anything that seems complex, risky, or time-consuming and will be very hesitant to make a quick decision if what you’re offering doesn’t appear simple to use.

• Demanding -- As a salesperson, you better know your product or service well. People have no interest in wasting time with someone that they think is incompetent or unprofessional.

People are frazzled and under a lot of pressure, even if that pressure is self-imposed. You have to take the time to understand how to bypass these barriers in your buyer persona or else your message will go unheard and you’ll remain completely off their radar.

The SNAP Factors and SNAP Rules

Frazzled prospects will be asking themselves four questions about the product or service that you offer:

1. Is it simple, will it take a lot of time or effort?
2. Does this company or person add value?
3. Does this align with what we’re trying to accomplish?
4. Is this a priority or can it wait?

The four SNAP factors (and rules) directly address these four questions.

Keep it Simple. Your goal is to simplify everything as much as possible. Your sales message should be simple and your product or service should be easy to understand (based on how you present it).

Be Invaluable. Your buyer persona wants to work with an expert who specializes in their field. Present them with new and creative ideas on a regular basis -- ideally, you want to become a resource of information to them. At that point, you become invaluable to them and the choice between you and your competitor becomes obvious.

Always Align.  You need to immediately establish an obvious connection between what you’re selling and what your persona is trying to accomplish. Your persona doesn’t care about you or your brand until they understand what’s in it for them.

Raise Priorities. Your persona is bombarded with sales pitches and marketing materials from lots of other companies. You have to do everything you can to ensure that your offering is the highest priority. This is going to require ongoing attention because your persona’s priorities will change over time.

How to Get Inside Your Audience's Head 

In our full synopsis of SNAP Selling: Speed Up Sales and Win More Business with Today’s Frazzled Customers, we'll to how to get into your audience's head, outline the buyer's matrix, and mapping the decision-making process to seal the deal. 

To view the full summary, click "keep reading" below.