First off, sorry for not blogging for the last few days. With the short week, new job and Thanksgiving, its been crazy. Sooo, Sales has changed quite a bit in the last 30 years to say the least. The obvious is the invention of all of our popular internet related devices and the internet itself. However, one thing that is often overlooked is how the "customer" has changed as well. The customer today is much more educated on the products they are looking to procure and even more so are educated on the "sales" process. As a result, the customer's buying habits and methodology has modified significantly. In my experience, playing devil's advocate with customers works most of the time. The pushy and forceful tactic of sales is over. The more consultative value added approach works much better. Allow customers to take all of the information you have given them and your competitors have given them in and digest what REALLY is going to help them make the decision. Often times, it comes down to how comfortable you make them feel, trust and personality; especially when the products are solving the same initiative just in different methods. Case in point, I was working on a project one time where the incumbent was a much less expensive product than mine. We were originally invited to the dance through a referral because the company was getting ready to refresh their equipment. The customer met with all of the vendors including the incumbent. Fortunately for us we were referred in and had a great meeting with the customer. Unfortunately for the incumbent they also had a great meeting but tried to sell on PRICE and were pushing their CUSTOMER to purchase their upgrade solution prior to the end of the quarter. Well long story short, I ended up getting awarded the project. We asked the customer why and this is what he said. My team asked him more questions around what his needs were now and in future. He also mentioned that we did not sell on PRICE at all cause we were more expensive but did a great job explaining WHAT is was he was getting for the additional investment. And we let him marinate on his decision and did not push him to make a decision. The point is this, yes some customers need to be pushed professional a little bit but let the customer make a decision. You don't know exactly what is going on in his or her head or what the competition is doing. We try our best to find out. REMEMBER to ask OPEN ended questions to find this out. But it is impossible to find out everything. Try letting your customers marinate on decisions a little and provide value, ask open ended questions, solve initiatives and get them to BUY. Do not SELL them!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Hurricane Sandy has brought a whole different meaning to Thanksgiving to a lot of us. To those that have lost loved ones our prayers go out to you. To those that have survived but our suffering our prayers also go out to you. God bless!!
Shawn
sr@shawncreilly.com
PS: By no means do I mean do NOT be persistence with customers. You need to be but in a professional manner. ;) Thought I would throw this out there as well. :)
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