Making more sales
quickly today is no longer about selling. It’s all about getting customers to
make a buy decision. Customers are more in control of their buying decisions
than ever before, with the wealth of alternatives and information available online,
and interactive access to sources they trust via social media. They don’t want
to be pushed into a sale, but they love to be pulled in by what is
important to them.
Thus, it is critical for
sales and marketing people to spend more time understanding what motivates
their customer decisions today and less time pushing for a fast close. It
means more focus on the customer buying process rather than
the customer selling process.
Here are some specifics
I recommend to accomplish this.
1. Get the view from the
customer early by talking to real people.
With interactive social
media and customers anxious to provide input, companies no longer need
expensive customer panels and market research to get a true customer
perspective. It’s important to do this early and continuously, since needs and
motivations change quickly.
2. Structure your sales
process based on customer buying steps.
Replace your sales
process steps with customer action steps. Continually drive for more
specifics on the steps customers follow, such as seeking friend
recommendation, scanning for good reviews and checking impact on the
environment. Tune your sales process to address each of these.
3. Make selling
collaborative rather than the domain of a single sales person.
With today’s online tools,
let the customer see and hear from your support organization,
marketing and top executives. The customer needs to feel like he is
joining a team who has his back rather than negotiating a special deal.
Make every sale a win-win outcome.
4. Identify specific
decision points and demographics of the buyer.
Individual buyer
demographics can no longer be generic titles, such as mother, owner or
organization. With today’s analytics, you can -- and need -- to look deeper at
each customer for culture, age, lifestyle and buyer-experience
expectations. Selling to the wrong profile loses sales.
5. Identify the key
relationships behind the customer buy decision.
Trusted advisor
connections and personal relationships often outweigh price and feature
comparisons. This is true even with corporate executives, as well as individual
consumer decisions. These relationships may be from support groups, online
influencers or industry experts.
6. Forecast lead closure
rates based on customer buying steps completed.
Sales projections based
on sales steps completed puts the focus on the wrong equation. Closing sales
requires an understanding of how to get the customer to move to the next step
in his buying process. Where this need is not met should be a new marketing
task.
Another way to speed up
the customer buying process and improve your credibility is to know your
customer so well that you can effectively address potential objections before
they are even raised. This includes recognizing that you have competition, and
using the competitor offering to highlight your advantages. It’s never a good
thing to denigrate your competition.
Also, don’t forget to
follow-up with and nurture existing customers. In today’s open communication
environment, every satisfied customer can bring you four to six new ones
quickly with credibility already established and without any selling. In
addition, the cross-selling and up-selling opportunities can be far more
lucrative than a sole focus on new customer acquisition.
Overall, the key is to
put yourself in your customer’s shoes, and lead them through their own buying
decision process. Most customers don’t mind being led, if they are convinced
that you are a leader rather than a pusher. It’s important that you listen to
their needs before charging down a specific path. Nobody trusts someone who has
all the answers before they know the question
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