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How can sales convince buyers to buy?
A salesperson sells – that is what he does.
As a salesperson, you may sell to people who desperately need whatever it is that you are selling. You may sell an item to someone who can live without it, but would like to have one anyway. You are also going to at least try to sell an item to people who could not care less about what you are trying to sell. How?
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8 Answers
As you point out Marco, a common characteristic shared by sales people is a compelling need to sell. However strong that need to sell is, it is absolutely meaningless until you find a customer with a compelling need to buy. Trying to "sell" in the absence of a need to buy is simply a waste of the sales person (and customer's) time and a certain way to antagonize the customer.
The sales person often needs to help create the compelling need to buy. The underlying themes in Challenger Selling, Provocative Selling, even solutions or consultative selling include this as a core theme. As sales people we need to identify opportunities for customer to think about their businesses differently, to seize new opportunities, etc. Getting the customer to recognize these and to want to take action is creating that need.
Increasingly sales people have to be engaged in creating this need and providing the leadership to the customer. If the sales person simply waits until customer have the need and reach out--they are probably getting engaged too late to be successful.
It starts by changing the own attitude from "I have to sell a product" to "I love to solve my customer's problems and to drive their results".
In general, it means working consequently backwards from the customer, from the outside to the inside, model the customer first before mapping to the product and services.
GoTo Customer frameworks help sales people to communicate value in a structured and systematic way to cover the dimensions of context, relevance and stage / maturity along the customer's problem solving process. It is mission critical to get engaged in a proactive way at an early stage, before the customers create RFP's. The earlier we engage, the more we are able to design a really compelling approach, tailored to the specific needs of the specific customer to drive their results.
Asking executive buyers, how they differentiate among vendors, it's all about the ability that vendors can map their relevant capabilities to the specific buyer's needs. It's also important that it's easy to do business with them and that the economic value of products and services can be presented (see also latest Forrester Research studies)
So, valuable conversations are about THEM, not about the vendor's products and services...
It's about communicating value, it's about understanding the customer's problem from a business process perspective and designing a corresponding approach which is able to drive the customer's desired results and outcomes.
1. You are entitled to reasonable compensation.
2. Don't sell yourself short!
3. Don't apologize!
4. Always be willing to walk away!
5. Know How to justify your price.
6. When to negotiate your price.
7. Make the buyer work for concessions.
8. Qualify your prospective buyers.
9 know How to deal with three typical buyer tactics.
10 Leave the customer feeling satisfied.
http://www.nichesuite.com/
Marco, there was an amazing news photo last winter of a Chinese airliner stuck in the snow about 100 meters short of the gate. The airline made all the passengers get out, line up along the trailing edge of the wings, and push the plane the rest of the way. Had there been a tractor/tug sales person among the passengers, he or she would certainly have made a sale.
Your objective as a sales person is to find an airplane stuck in the snow and offer a viable, desirable way out. Conversely, if you perceive that your objective is to convince people with no airplane or snow that they need a tractor/tug, then you are in for some dismal times.
“may sell to people who desperately need whatever it is that you are selling”,
then don’t give them reasons Not TO BUY! By talking Features they don’t want,
or introducing Competitors they had not thought of
or by introducing Price too early or incorrectly.
“may sell an item to someone who can live without it, but would like to have one anyway”.
We spend a lot of time Selling to people like this.
Finding out WHY they would like one is the key to selling.
Convincing them they don’t HAVE to live without one is the art of selling.
HOW Salespeople do this by using interactive Skills,
in WHAT they Say and HOW they Say it.
You can learn these Selling Skills in a matter of about 40 hours,
and then spend the next 4,000 hours to become a Practitioner,
after 10,000 hours you will be a Master
and then finally qualified to teach other people, How to sell.
“may at least try to sell an item to people who could not care less about what
you are trying to sell.”
May providence shine upon me and NEVER sit me next to you on an Intercontinental Flight.
Take Yoda’s advice don’t try, DO.
And, don’t do to people who couldn’t care less for they are the worst kind of prospects.
Sales’ prospecting is all about finding people who care,
even if you can’t find anyone who cares then please leave us who “don’t care less” alone.
By not being overbearing... don't push it too hard.
Many times, people only buys what they need,
so understand what your potential customers "need"
and how your product or service could contribute to it.
In today's arena where everything seems available
with a click- "positioning" has become even more important.
Therefore, "content" in sites and no sweet-talks
but sincerity and solution in person are key.
More so, "timing" is crucial getting deals done...
we're not simply talking about the right mood
or having that "value" proposition but
being there when needed most.
Long-term relationship follows when
you are able to help them grow.
This is @TheGreatLight.
The buyer searches for that "one" initiator factor in the whole conversation that will sound good enough and convince him that his problem will get solved by taking up this solution.
For B2B sales, the process of buying is a complex one and in this case, the buyer is an organization with all its complexities in structure, power bases, technical knowhow, motivation drivers, buying pattern and behavior, etc. Therefore for such complex structures, one needs to be prepared with the understanding of all channels that can create bottlenecks and motivation drivers that can be used to actually generate interest in people pushing the deal up the hierarchy.
In such cases, the "one with the gold" doesn't necessarily make the decision all by himself or herself. People at various jobs in the same company but being a part of the collective decision making process will need to get convinced that this product or solution will actually make some sense in their own ways or jobs and that's the convincing part that the salesguy needs to achieve. that's where the study of drivers, decision making time, behavior, pattern in previous products procured, etc will come in handy and need to be studied.
Gosh, Stella. This is a fantastic list, although I don't know 'three typical buyer tactics' you are referring to. . . A recent client project I worked on involved discovering which practices a company's top producers were performing repeatedly. The company had over fifty reps distributed throughout the US and Canada, and management was unclear exactly what made a top producer a top producer. Consistent with what others have mentioned here, one top-producing salesperson attributed her success, in part, to the fact that "there is no sales urgency in my voice."
The irony was that her managers were instructing the new reps to push the company's monthly specials, and they were failing left and right. The rep I interviewed told me she considered such tactics a complete waste of her time.
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