Collaborating with prospects on their
buyer’s journey to help them achieve their business objectives is hard
work. But it’s easier than just selling.
I’ve written often about the fact that
sales is not something that you do to a prospect. It’s a process you go
through with a prospect. More than anything, sales is a service that you
provide to your prospects.
Prospects rarely want you to sell them
exactly what they think they need. You’re the expert. They want you to
help them decide which solution represents the best solution for their
objectives.
This collaboration with your prospects
is hard work. There’s a reason why the word “labor” is the root of the
word collaboration. It’s co-work, or co-labor, that ends up helping your
buyer achieve the objective of their buyer’s journey: making a good
decision to invest in a solution to help them achieve their objectives.
It would be a lot easier to just follow
your set sales process and treat all prospects like interchangeable
objects. Successful selling is not about taking the easy path. You may
think that you can just copy your sales process from one opportunity to
the next. But, it doesn’t work that way.
Every prospect is unique and needs to be served accordingly.
It starts with the questions you ask
during discovery. They have to engage the interest of the buyer and
challenge their current perceptions of what would be the best solution
to meet their needs.
Most importantly, your questions have
to demonstrate to the prospect that you’re engaged in the collaborative
process of helping them move through their buyer’s journey. Too often
sales reps have a standard list of questions that they trot out to ask
every prospect. In those cases, your prospects usually know that you’re
just going through the motions.
How? Because you don’t have perceptive
follow-on questions to ask in response to their answers. Remember, it’s
not the first question that demonstrates your value to the prospects.
It’s all the questions that follow.
Selling is hard work. Ironically, it
only makes it harder if you don’t collaborate with the buyer. The extra
work you put into each deal, to engage and collaborate with the buyer to
help them define and choose the best solution for their requirements,
ultimately will increase your conversion rate. You’ll win more orders.
While that is extra work, hitting your number is a lot easier than
taking the easy path and not getting the order. After all, chasing quota
from behind is no place to be.
To your greater success,
Peter C. Mclees, Sales Coach and Trainer
Smart Development
petercmclees@gmail.com
Mobile: 323-854-1713
We help sales reps and sales organizations accelerate their sales.
To your greater success,
Peter C. Mclees, Sales Coach and Trainer
Smart Development
petercmclees@gmail.com
Mobile: 323-854-1713
We help sales reps and sales organizations accelerate their sales.
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