I am not suggesting that selling ice in Siberia will become easy using this method, and you may need to rethink and revise your current sales approach over time.
In part 1, I made the following statement:
EVERY BUSINESS HAS COMMON GOALS – IN AUSTRALIA AND GLOBALLY
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Reduce costs
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Increase revenue from existing customers
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Increase (take) market share from competitors
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Expand and build potential markets
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Improve business effiencies
The above points are potential ‘benefits’ of whatever it is that you are selling – forget about features until later. Find out as much as you can about your prospect PRIOR to your face to face meeting. Think about how your product or service can help their business in any or several of the above areas.
So you are selling a solution – not a product or service.
Point 1 above is too often the focus – yes it is important to business, and indeed decisions will often be made purely based on price, but leave selling on price until you uncover a more valuable benefit of your offer, commensurate with points 2 – 5 above.
This is by no means intended to be anything more than sharing my personal experience in sales over many decades. My final post in this series will be factual examples of how this process has worked for me.
Happy Selling!
Rick Kemp
Senior BDM
OSS Australia