Does your sales strategy align with your buyers?

Does your sales strategy align with your buyers? It is more important to know what your clients want to buy than what you think you want to sell. Most traditional selling strategies leave the client feeling pushed into buying for reasons other than their own.  We often see cases where someone sells something without a deep understanding of the problems, how these problems impact the company and the individual by role, and quantifiably what happens if they decide to solve the problem or NOT.  The sales cycle is shrinking and there is limited time to build rapport and understand the key objectives and motives of your prospects.  The new economy is about helping consumers buy, not selling products and the chest thumping big EGO’s of the world will not survive in the new economy.

The internet empowered the buyer with relevant information to educate themselves and self qualify.  Now selling requires empathy and a deep understanding of the business case drivers and motives that cause prospects to take action.  The word “Empathy” is the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings (such as sadness or happiness) that are being experienced by another sapient or semi-sapient being. Empathic Questioning with the intention to help the client do what is best for them IS the key to shifting the focus from selling to helping people buy. It is a long term proposition and there is no room for EGO here.  We believe that customers buy for their own reasons and we should be aware of these motives whether it benefits us or not.  The sales process is thoughtfully facilitating communication such that you ask your prospects and clients to take a deeper look at their challenges to decide if they want to go to the mat to resolve them.  You must create a pleasant buying experience if you expect to get repeat business.

Example:  I worked on a project several years ago and the sales team was using the traditional solution selling method and the competitive win ratio was 26%.  After carefully interviewing the client and prospects it became obvious that what they were selling was not what the client wanted to buy.  AND most of the post mortems showed that the clients did not feel understood and pushed into buying for reasons other than their own (manipulated).  We installed components of a unique sales methodology and the win ratio hit 61% and the deal size went from 45k to 247k.

Tips: Questions to ask yourself:

Do I understand my client problems at Root Cause?

Do I understand the impact to them as individuals?

Quantifiably, what happens if they solve their problem or NOT?

What happens if they do nothing?

Explaining the steps is easy, HOW you objectively question and get to root cause is a skill.

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