The gist of the article: what are the factors that make it difficult for a salesperson to work before he or she interacts with a customer?
This article focuses on describing the factors that affect the selling decision during the seller-customer interaction, and the influence a sales strategy has on sales.
What would a company gain if its salespeople started selling solutions as a sales strategy?
– Increase in sales profitability
– Increase in loyal customers
– Steady business growth
Several factors that make it difficult for a company to make the transition from selling products to selling solutions
Factor 1. Gap between marketing and sales.
Marketers often use the simplest description of their target segments for convenience: demographic breakdown by socio-demographic criteria (gender, marital status, income, etc.). They buy instagram followers, and by pulling them into the sales funnel, they don’t always cling to key customers.
This leads to a large proportion of customers not being targeted by the company’s products.
Salespeople spend a lot of time trying to persuade customers to buy the products they are selling. A high percentage of them refuse to buy. This is because the sellers do not have an effective sales strategy.
Factor 2. Sales orientation.
They think that what they want is automatically what they want.
Factor 3. Salesperson role models.
A role model is a consistent pattern of how a salesman behaves when in contact with a customer.
Who does he see himself as in the sales process?
What roles does he choose for himself?
For example:
– Storyteller
– Consultant
– Presenter
– Expert
– Shipper
– Sales copywriter
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An example from life:
I recently observed a shop assistant in a hypermarket selling a frying pan. A customer went to the shelf and started looking at the existing frying pan options. After a few minutes, the shop assistant came up to her and started offering different options, without even asking what kind of food she wanted the frying pan for. The main arguments for suggesting certain models were: getting a discount and getting a free bonus card, as part of a sales strategy.
Question for reflection. What role model was the consultant demonstrating?
Before reading on, answer yourself a few questions based on your experience as a shopper:
– Why did you buy a certain product?
– What preceded it?
– Why did you choose this product and not another?
– What ultimately influenced your choice?
By answering these questions to yourself, you will sooner or later replicate the technology of selling solutions, or a sales strategy, from a buyer’s perspective.
What makes these approaches different?
How we arrive at a buying decision or the key steps in the Customer Path model:
A. The emergence of an internal state of discomfort.
B. Identifying the cause of the discomfort (the need/problem).
C. The desire and willingness to solve the problem.
D. Identification of the criteria for choosing a solution.
E. The choice of a solution.
F. Implementing the solution through the purchase of a product/service.
G. Evaluation of the product/service obtained and the sales/use process.
Important. Some of these stages ‘in the mind’ of the buyer are unconscious. Asking questions by the seller is necessary to bring them to a conscious level.
The seller has a choice:
He is a participant in the process of clarifying the problem and choosing the most appropriate solution.
He is the executor of the buyer’s decision, who has already selected a product.
In the case of the option (the executor of the buyer’s decision), there is usually a need for additional discounts, because the basic work of selecting the product as the solution has been done by the buyer himself.
Just in case!
Can the buyer know exactly what he wants? Yes, they can.
However, someone who sells a solution will certainly make an attempt to make sure. For the ‘selling products’ approach, this step is not necessary. When you buy real instagram followers and through advertising give them the product they need, the way is short. The seller immediately gives what is asked for.
The general outline of the solution selling or consultative selling approach, a sales strategy, was developed by Neil Rexham. The technique is based on a list of questions and a sequence of asking them.
The problem identified in the discussion with the buyer cannot be solved using the company’s products.
I’ve encountered this problem several times when watching salespeople working on projects I’ve led for some companies.
In these cases the meeting ended with the client saying, “Thank you very much! Thanks to you, I understand the problem that I need to solve first. And then I will come back to you again”, – as a rule, they did not come back.
So let’s get back to the answer to the question: What does a salesperson need to know before he or she meets with a customer?
It is imperative to know:
A. The characteristics of the products he is selling.
B. The potential problems which can be solved by purchasing these products
C. Possible customer situations in which these problems may arise.
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