YOUR CLIENT AND YOU SHARE A GOAL.
FORGET ABOUT TECHNIQUES, FOCUS ON INTENTIONS.
Building strong, long-term relations in business requires proper skills. Unfortunately, clients often don’t trust sales consultants.
WHY IS THAT SO?
Concerns about wrong purchase decision, unclear intentions of salesmen or lack of communication – these are only a few of possible reasons. Consultant’s main job is to make his client aware that they do share a goal. Look, the truth is that both a client and a salesman are trying to fulfil needs of the first of them. Achievement of that goal brings benefits to both sides. So by helping a client to succeed, salesman also reaches his goal. Therefore at my work I always try to expose my intentions at the very beginning – to ensure my customer that we are trying to achieve same goal.
REMEMBER, YOUR CLIENT AND YOU HAVE A COMMON GOAL.
YOUR JOB IS TO MAKE HIM AWARE OF THAT.
Building strong relations require mutual trust. To earn you customer’s trust you need to be honest with him – otherwise your intentions won’t be credible. Client will see it from a mile off if you try to force him to invest in something he doesn’t need. Forget about your techniques, focus on your intentions. If you work on B2B market that should become your mantra.
STOP SELLING – START LISTENING
Make sure you spend enough time with your client
– listening, asking and disscussing.
A lot of people have wrong image of a successful sales person. They all consider him as a talkative, confident guy who can literally sell everything. A guy like him enters a meeting with a Hollywood smile, charms with his products’ selection, ensures that his company is an absolute leader and concludes with a great deal proposal. Presentation is found successful, there are no difficult questions from a customer, and everyone shakes hands with a smile. After a week it turns out that… client goes for another offer.
What could possibly go wrong?
A PERFECT SALESMAN HAS NOTHING TO SELL!
A perfect salesman is the one that solves problems. He is an advisor, a partner. He offers more than a product – a value. Customized blend of his skills and offering featured that provides your firm with real benefit. That helps it grow and develop. A perfect salesman focuses on customers’ needs. He tries to look at the problem from his perspective. He makes sure that both sides interpret a problem the same. Than he invests his time and effort to create a tailoredvalue offer.
Short story
Young, unexperienced salesman once got hired by big sales company. Due its to lack of personnel he was scheduled for his first business meeting after a single week! He felt like being thrown in a deep end – he had no product knowledge, neither information about a market nor a customer.
He was frightened that a client would ask him tricky questions that would unmask his ignorance. His strategy to survive was quite simple: he keeps on asking questions about all the details that a client may find important in relation to the problem and sought solution. Meeting finally ended and… within the same month client requested business proposal. When asked what disposed him to cooperation he said:
“We saw 10 other products except yours. All had similar features and prices. What made your company standing out was your employee’s attitude. He was the only one who showed interest in our needs. He asked a lot of accurate questions and helped us to realize what our problem actually was.”
FORGET ABOUT TECHNIQUES, FOCUS ON INTENTIONS
STOP SELLING – START LISTENING
In the next step I will explain how to define customer’s needs.
Especially when they don’t want to talk about them.
STEP 2: HOW TO DEFINE CUSTOMERS’ NEEDS EFFECTIVELY?
DON’T TRY TO GUESS!
You can also watch our SlideShare presentation:
[slideshare id=49506212&doc=gjwh5hfcskqu9oj97tbv-signature-54b54c3dada107d0900cafaa1e7fd959e92e34d33efefc82b7ecdd8357f96c67-poli-150617131021-lva1-app6892]
CEO at InStream. Sales Advisor.
