1. Be a true business consultant for your customer. Talk business strategy with your customers. Show how your offering advances their strategy. Create solutions that solve your customers_ problems. Customers expect solutions that support and drive their central business strategies. Talk results with customers. Show how your offering can positively affect customers_ key performance metrics. Identify the appropriate metrics and create a compelling case for your solution. Be innovative. Increase credibility as a trusted advisor by bringing to the table innovative, highly differentiated solutions that respond to customers_ unique business challenges. Customers value new ideas and insights from your experience with issues like theirs.
2. Do your homework. Know more, be more connected than your customer and turn that knowledge into value. More than ever before, customers want insight. Salespeople must invest time and energy in researching their customers_ own customers, markets, competitors, employees, and challenges. Go beyond asking good questions about the customer's situation. In a recession, when competition is at its fiercest, salespeople need to know much more before the call, so they can prepare insights to share with the customer during the call insights that turn into meaningful actions after the call. Before getting in front of the customer, salespeople must know the answers to questions (or at least have formed opinions) about the customer's vision, own customers, competitors, strengths, and weaknesses. So much information is available in the public domain that asking the customer to explain it to you is a waste of his or her time.
3. Focus on results and relationship. In these tough
economic times your customer is focused on results. You
In addition, your organization is focused on results. It is important
to enhance both the customer relationship and results.
Beating your customer in the short term may provide
short-term results, but it is destructive in the client retention
and growth game. Losing to your customer is one of the
quickest ways to get sales management's attention. Those
that balance beating and losing do so by persisting in
seeking a solution that involves their customer in a search
for innovative answers to tough questions, converting
opposition to mutual understanding, and in extremely
tough situations asserting their own needs and
encouraging the customer to do the same.
Author: Chris Dalzell
About the author:
A Sales & Marketing Trainer & Coach for over 20 years running a successful training & consultancy company the People Development Partnership www.peopledevelopmentpartnership.co.uk built a reputation for being passionate about developing people and building successful businesses.In January 2009 Chris set up SOS-Save Our Sales.
Article source: Free Sales Articles.
