Let us create a 3d Digital eBook for you! DigyCat.com
|
||
|
||
|
Sales Information | Let us create a 3d Digital eBook for you! DigyCat.com |
|
|
|
Selling the Difficult: How to Sell What People Dont Understand How to Buy
I'll play a seller, using conventional selling methods, selling something difficult to understand; you be the prospective buyer. As we go through the process together, note your reactions, how your beliefs are being challenged, what 'objections' and emotions come up for you as I try to 'sell' you. Once we're done with that component, I'll review how it would be different using Buying Facilitation; hopefully you'll be able to take that to the bank. Here we go (and please excuse me for being a bit playful and provocative. I can't pass up the opportunity!): CONVENTIONAL SELLING As a subscriber and reader of my newsletter, you have probably garnered some understanding of the Buying Facilitation process. You have probably read Selling with Integrity, or gone to our site, or read several of the past newsletters. So... Just out of curiosity... What's going on with your sales effort? Your sales training effort? Are you getting the numbers you want? Are you meeting your projections? If not, why are you still using that same sales program you're using? Have you thought of doing something different? What would stop you from using a new method to get better results? You must know by now, obviously, that my methodology would bring in the best results of any 'sales' training. So why aren't you calling me and purchasing a training program? Why aren't you buying hundreds of copies of Selling with Integrity to give to your sales people? Here I could offer you a pitch as to why Buying Facilitation is better than SPIN or Solution Selling or Sandler. I could tell you why and how it works better - to close more sales and make your sellers brand ambassadors, not to mention give pure value-add by making your sales people true consultants to the buyer. Yadayadayada. Hey. Maybe you're not buying because you don't believe or understand that Buying Facilitation would help your sales people be better consultants. Or bring in more revenue. Or is it because you are comfortable with what you've got in place now? Or that you don't want to go through the change process? Or that you think you are already doing the best you can do? Or that you love your current vendor? Or is it because you think that if you add something new you'd have to throw away the huge investment you've already made in sales training? Of course, I can handle the objections to all of the above!! I can tell you that if you are thinking any of the above, you've made an error in judgment - and obviously my job now is to dispel these objections and make you see the TRUTH - that my product will be better....... Got it? How did that feel? What do you know now that you didn't know before? About my product? About your needs? About your choices? About your willingness to change? About what your decision team needs to notice or consider before you do anything differently? How do you feel about being pushed into a corner? About being 'wrong' on the end of my 'right'? About feeling dumb to my being smart? About your confusion and need to defend your beliefs? By 'selling', I end up juxtaposing our belief systems and our behaviors. Even though I set this all up 'nicely', and am willing to be your 'consultant', you know darn well that my overriding desire is to sell you my training and get you to see that using my stuff would be better than what you've got. PRODUCT VS. NEED VS. DECIDING Obviously, the fact that I have a 'great product' is not good enough. As a prospective buyer you'd have to figure out: --If you are ready, willing, and able to make a change now; --If there is anything you are actually missing; --How to get your team to want to change; --Whether or not to believe that doing something different would make a difference; --What you'd want to get out of a training that's different from what you have now; --What you would be willing to put up with to get that change; --How your culture/company would handle a shift at this point in its life cycle. And even if you don't mind change or the chaos change brings, you would have to convince your team to buy in to the need to do something different - and that doing something different would include an out-of-the-box buying-support method vs. a sales method. In other words - and I know I've said this - it doesn't matter what your product is or how you sell it if the buyer doesn't know how to align the culture and buying team around a decision. And it's NOT just a decision about the problems your product solves - it's about the entire environment that holds and maintains the problem. NEED AND PROBLEMS AND DECISIONS Let's take a bit more time now and look at the system here. You've got a great product. Worked hard at creating it, testing it, piloting it. You've gotten good press and your competition can't touch you. But those prospects you've targeted - those exact people who need your product, who are suffering because they are not using your product - don't think they need you. They kindly listen to your pitches. They admit they are having problems in just the area your product handles. They even know they cannot fix the problem doing what they are doing. But they aren't buying. What's stopping them? What's making it more viable for them to keep doing what they are doing - losing money or time or market share or employee/partner good will - rather than buy your product and solve their problem? I've heard many, many sales folks say that the reason their product isn't being purchased is because buyers don't understand the product or why they need it; or they get confused between your product and others that perform almost-similar tasks and believe them to be comparable. What's going on? Sellers often think they need to educate their prospects. Call centers and financial institutions are famous for spending huge amounts of time and money in giving their reps lots of product training, believing that if they can pitch or present the features and benefits skillfully, buyers will know how to buy. Yet information does not teach someone how to make a decision (see Newsletters of 3/7/01 and 1/17/02 about the differences between information and criteria). As we saw in my initial example, people can have all the information in the world about a product and that won't teach them how to make a buying decision if they believe that they are doing as well as they can be doing given all the factors involved. What do you need to be doing to help them understand that they need to buy your product? WHAT'S THE PROBLEM? Let's take a look at how your prospect experiences his/her environment - those areas that you don't necessarily think about when you are selling your product. 1. it's working the way it's always worked. People can't always tell that there is something wrong. When a software company called me recently to bring Buying Facilitation in to their call center, they claimed they wanted to become more 'customer centric.' Yet they only had an incoming call center: they were presenting a problem to their prospects by giving the prospects a one-way buying channel. It's hard to be customer centric when you are limiting the ways that buyers can connect. 2. the work environment is created around maintaining the problem. The call center folks did not notice there was a problem; it had always been that way. All of the six sigma measurement tools and the sales teams and the management initiatives were based on this particular type of sales strategy. Was it customer centric? Not at all. It needed to be changed - but first the client had to recognize there was a problem. A more conventional sales approach would be to say: "Gee. You've got a problem. Buyers can't call you back if they have questions, or if they need to go speak with their bosses before making a decision. You're cutting off a huge range of buying possibilities." The Facilitative Question I asked was:"How do you plan on mitigating the distance between being customer centric and having a one-way buying channel?" This Facilitative Question offered the understanding that: 1. there was a problem that needed to be fixed and that needed several layers of management and skill to fix it; 2. they had some decisions to be made around what 'customer centric' might look like; 3. an action had to be taken in order to be congruent with their goals; 4. I was a consultant who would support them in recognizing problems and support them in discovering their own internal solutions. 5. a change means examining all the decisions - including all the peripheral areas that convene around the problem - that got them where they are, and recognizing that something's not working efficiently.By using my expertise to walk with them in their own field of expertise, and by using a Facilitative Question to help them recognize and potentially fix the problem using their own resources, I actually taught my prospect how to notice that they were less than efficient and they needed to think differently. If I had just told them I had a product that would help them become more customer centric wouldn't have gotten them closer to a decision. CHANGE When you are selling a product that folks don't seem to understand, it's not a problem with your product, or with your marketing material. It's a decisioning problem: how will folks know what they need to consider to be ready, willing, or able to decide to change, and having made that decision, how to choose the ways they are willing to change. What needs to happen in their environment for them to recognize: 1. what's missing and how it got that way; 2. that they can/cannot fix it themselves; 3. the cultural/internal issues that need to be addressed in order for them to do something different and have an environment that does not get destroyed through the chaos of change. Make no mistake: when you suggest that a prospect should bring your product into an environment that has worked very well without it, you are suggesting major change. HELPING PROSPECTS MAKE A DECISION I can't express strongly enough that you can't sell without a buyer (People laugh when I say that, but sales is based on selling - not having people buy!). What needs to happen to have you start considering making your sales people neutral navigators to help the client make their best decision? And I'm not talking about consultative selling. Consultative selling does not go far enough: it only uses questions based around the problem that is solved by the seller's product. There is a whole environment/culture that has created and maintained the problem that needs to make changes before it's willing to address a fix. I'm going to go back to my tag line, as it seems to fit here:Do you want to sell? Or have someone buy? It's time to become facilitators. Then buyers understand exactly how to purchase your product. Sharon Drew Morgen is the author of NYTimes Best seller Selling with Integrity. She speaks, teaches and consults globally around her new sales model, Buying Facilitation. http://www.newsalesparadigm.com
MORE RESOURCES: Sales - Google News What Nintendo's 2011 sales mean for Wii U, third parties - Gamasutra
Orchids Paper Products Company Reports Record Quarterly Converted Product ... - Sacramento Bee
Apotex pays Bristol, Sanofi damages over Plavix - Wall Street Journal
Beer sales could be boon for Arizona's universities - AZ Central.com
Fed Sells $6.2 Billion of Bonds From AIG Rescue to Goldman - San Francisco Chronicle
iPhone on Sprint: Great for sales, terrible for profits - Christian Science Monitor
Wells Fargo's Carroll eyes cross-selling by brokers - Reuters
Las Vegas Still Selling More Homes in January, Yet Prices Still Declining - World Property Channel
Newsstand Report: Sales Down Across the Board, Elle Plumets 18%, and ... - Fashionista
Average Salespeople “Fly By The Seat Of Their Pants” - Utah Pulse
|
 |
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
The Never Ending Sale Once you have added a new customer to your book of business, plan on keeping that customer until you have all of their business, and the business of their family and friends.This way you can ensure having their business forever. Selling Is Not A Dirty Word Selling--a word that strikes terror in writers and professionals. We love to write. Handshake Intimidation In some situations, attempting to intimidate the other person will actually increase the amount of rapport you gain with them. CEO introductions, meeting other salespeople (and competitors), and sales job interviews come to mind. Are You a Cultivator or a Harvester? As a result of providing marketing consulting, training and coaching to a variety of individuals and industries over the years, I have come to recognize that people generally approach the business building process in one of two ways. Everyone tends to be what I identify as either Cultivators or Harvesters. The Benefits of Metal Store Fixtures Your choice of materials for store fixtures includes wood, metal, plastic and conglomerate materials such as pressed wood and fiberboard. Depending upon your budget, the weight and size of the product being displayed and the style of your retail establishment, one of these raw materials will serve your needs well. Sell YOU With Your Small Talk (Yes You Can) Want to build a relationship -- sell yourself for a job -- get ahead -- make a sale?Your 'small talk' is crucial.Everyday conversation can make or break you in personal relationships and in the business world. Store Owners - Five Ideas to Increase Sales 1. Animate your window display. Why Cold Calling Is Dead Our world of selling is closed off from other areas of business that continue to adopt and embrace new, efficient ideas. I was reminded of this recently while re-reading Seth Godin's "Permission Marketing. Your Voice is Your Instrument On an introductory call, your voice is your instrument. During a face-to-face meeting, you have visual cues and body language available to add layers of meaning. The Truth Behind Linear Selling: Why It Can Make Prospects Run The Other Way Sean works for a major telecom company.During one of our coaching sessions, he told me, "I've been diligent about following the sales process that my company believes is requiredto make a sale -- but, for some strange reason, my prospects don't want to fit into that process. Asking The Right Questions On an introductory call, how do you gather all of the information that you need from a prospect? An introductory call is usually fairly short, just a few minutes. You generally do not have the time to thoroughly question your prospect and then also move on to your next step, setting that introductory meeting. Pinging for Success: Creating Search Patterns One of my first internship jobs as a college student was working for a defense company who, at the time, developed a highly sophisticated torpedo for hunting down submarines and destroying them. The operation of the torpedo was pretty fascinating. Your Profit is in Your Follow-up: A System for Increased Sales Conversion No matter what you sell--products, services, or causes--one of the key ingredients to your success will be the attention you give your sales lead follow-up system.Notice that I used the word system to describe your follow-up program. Make Your Trade Show Booth Popular So, you are taking your products and heading to a trade show, but this year you want to make your trade show booth popular in order to garner more business and have no idea how to do it. Actually, it really is quite simple to make a popular trade show booth as long as you put forth the effort. Looong and Boooring Sales Letters You have all seen them,the sales letters that never ends.They go on and on about how this product can do this and that. My Competitor Has a Better Product The topic of this issue's article is a response to a question submitted by one of my newsletter readers. QUESTION - "At the moment, my competitor's have a far better product/deal, due to circumstances out of my control. The Allure of Antique Store Fixtures They say if you wait long enough, a style you liked in almost any genre will come back. This is as true for retail store fixtures as it is for clothing or styles of music. Sales Letters - How to Write Them You could just send out your brochure to potential customersbut it's much better to personalise your mailing with a wellwritten sales letter.Personalise - Using the person's name in a sales letter willgive you the greatest success. Mindset Over Materials: The Secret Weapon of Sustainable Sales Success Long-term sales success has less to do with skills or knowledgethan you might think. Nor are stunning brochures or excellentproducts guaranteed to make one iota of impact over time. How To Improve Your Voice VOICEThe Image the customer has of the Salesperson is vital. In telesales the image is created through voice alone.
|
|
Looking For Royalty Free Photos for your Website, Business or Advertising?
List4Sale Domain Is For Sale - $10,000 For Enquiries eMail Us © www.List4Sale.biz 2011 |
|
