This means that you need to sell yourself to the customerby building rapport while conducting a good needs assessmentbefore you begin to sell your company and its capabilities. Not coincidentally, that needs assessment will also allow you to sell your company far more successfully. Why? Because you must first understand your customers needs, before you can answer the customers most important question about your company.
You must understand the customers needs before you can effectively sell your company.
In deciding whether to do business with you, customers have three basic questions about your company:
1. What does it do?
2. What is it known for?
3. Is your company a good match for mine?
The first two questions usually can be answered with a rehearsed sales presentation that explains what your company does and the benefits that other clients have gained from doing business with you.
The third question is most important, however, and you cannot answer it with a generic presentation that relies on standard information. To persuade customers that your company is a good match for theirs, you must use a sales strategy that tailors your answer to their specific needs.
The best way to do this is to tie your company presentation directly to needs that you uncovered earlier in the sales call. You thus are able to present your companys capabilities as solutions to the customers key problems and opportunities.
Sales Training-Avoiding Self Deception Sales Training - Great Sales Success for Women (and Men Too!)
Key #2
In this 10 Key article series, learn how to catapult your
career, your sales and your life through learning superior
Saleswoman-ship. Key #2 is Avoiding Self Deception
Self Deception
Bob Broadley, one of the top insurance salesmen in Australia
puts it in strong terms. He says that the single biggest
failure sales people make is self deception . He said he
wasn t born with success. He had to study the most successful
sales people he could find.
His advice? Don t fool yourself into thinking you re selli ..
For Example:
You told me earlier that service from your current supplier is taking more than 24 hours and that this causes you problems meeting your production goals. We would be a good match for you because our service response averages less than four hours. With our company handling your service you will find it far easier to achieve your goals.
Are we a good match? is every customers most important question about your company. You cannot answer it before you have uncovered, understood, and agreed upon the customers needs. Sell yourself first by demonstrating that you care about those needs. Youll be amazed at how much more effectively you can then sell your company.
In The Field:
If you are in a commodity business and competing with rivals who sell on price alone, it is especially vital to tell your customers a powerful company story that explains why they should do business with you. For National Camera Exchange, which competes in the commodity-oriented business of photographic equipment, differentiating itself from the myriad of price-only suppliers is a daily challenge.
National Cameras added-value proposition lies in the expertise and sales consulting skills of its sales force. Its equation for success or failure is simple: If the story of that consulting capability isnt told effectively, the company loses to lower-priced competitors. Sales and training manager Sean Morgan says that an Action Selling Sales Training Program made a world of difference. Since more of our salespeople are using their sales skills in telling our company story, we are posting higher numbers, and they look less like a roller coaster, Morgan said. When the customer needs an education on camera equipment
http://www.articlesfactory.com/pic/x.gif" alt="Free Articles" border="0">, it is critical to sales success to show them how National Camera is a good match for their needs.
How to Sell Your CFO on Sales Training Ask any CFO what their first impression is when they hear the words Sales Training and they might communicate back their Real world vocabulary of un-accountable and un-measurable. Simply put, they know theyre wasting at least half their sales training budget dollars; the problem is they dont know which half. And from a sales management perspective, if you dont use your training budget, youll lose it. Here s how to approach your CFO...
Ask any CFO what their first impression is when they hear the words Sales Training and they might communicate back their Real world v ..
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Duane Sparks is chairman and founder of The Sales Board, a Minneapolis-based Sales Training company that has trained and certified more than 200,000 salespeople. He has personally facilitated more than 300 Action Selling training sessions. http://www.thesalesboard.com or call 800-232-3485.
