In this article we look at the strategy of selling a product. What you need to do to create a trusting relationship with your potential Customer!
This morning’s reflection takes its cue from Peter Drucker ‘s quote “In communication, the most important thing is to listen to what is not being said.”
My personal commentary on this quote, is embodied in a list of rules that I try to adhere to every day, when I meet possible new Clients, or when we gather around a table and implement a new Marketing and Communication strategy.
And so it is that, often times, when we meet possible new Clients, their goals are never really stated.
Perhaps it is because they are afraid that we will “do the math on them.”
Or in many cases they are afraid to tell us that the economic situation of their Company is not rosy.
Sales strategy and customer management
Our job is not to judge an Entrepreneur, but to study the right Marketing and Communication strategy to achieve the goals he or she has set.
The strategy must take into consideration both the activities in the medium and long term (3/5 years) and those in the short term (6 months/1 year).
In case a company is going through a difficult period, it is essential to take action now.
Therefore, such information cannot be hidden from the Agency or Consultant who is implementing the marketing strategy.
The short-term strategy can:
- Generate new turnover
- Improving margins
- Generate positive cash flow
- Achieving sales goals for a new product
For this reason, it is critical to understand what we really need or can do for the entrepreneur to do the right thing.
To achieve its goals, which may also coincide, with a return to marginality and positive cash flow.
Listening is the key element in understanding all that “we are not told.”
Example sales strategy
A sale is based, first and foremost, on a relationship of trust. For this reason, in order to build the right relationship with a customer, it is essential to listen to him or her
Listening allows us to understand what he really needs. That is, how we can help him.
As Zig Ziglar says, “You don’t convince people by talking, you convince them by asking them questions.”
The objective of this article is to make people perceive the extreme importance of listening to Clients or possible Clients.
Generally, the stage of listening and understanding are mainly perceived at the stage of selling, then acquiring a new possible client.
This is a partial truth, as the relationship between Company and Customer does not stop at just the sale, it continues afterwards. You must be able to take a long-term view.
Customer and prospect touch points with your company are many. We mention a few as examples:
- Contact customer support for more information regarding the service you have just purchased, or have yet to purchase;
- Request assistance from technical support when the washing machine stops working, the computer does not connect from the internet, etc;
- Contact with sales contact person to change the type of contract, or the duration of the Policy.
When defining our sales strategies, we must consider that we come into contact with our customers and potential customers every day.
Often it is evident, sometimes not, especially when contact is made through the Web and social media.
And each of these contacts has one main purpose: to meet Mr. Rossi’s needs. This purpose can also turn into opportunity as Mr. Rossi may decide to upgrade the service, buy a new washing machine, change the duration of the Policy etc..
In any case, everything comes through listening.
At Factory Communication, we cater exclusively to entrepreneurs, regardless of the size of their company or business.
For this reason, the analysis that follows has a specific target audience. Our interlocutor is the entrepreneur.
Selling comes through sincere and interested listening to the person in front of us.
If we do not really know his goals, we will not even know what his problems are. Because often times, Entrepreneurs, set goals to solve problems.
The most important stages of selling are the first two: approach and investigation.
Sales strategies: approach is the initial stage
It consists of getting into a true and empathetic relationship with our interlocutor. Nothing has to be fake or constructed.
You have to be genuinely interested in the person in front of you.
The topic of work is taboo. We talk about everything else. About life, family, children, passions, sports, dicking around.
And so we discover so many interesting aspects of the person in front of us.
We are taking the time to connect with that person. We are not eager to sell. Far from it.
We enter into a relationship with him.
The approach phase, technically, must last at least 15 minutes. If it lasts longer, 30 minutes or an hour, we have scored a goal.
The entrepreneur has little time to devote to us, and initially he is not willing to listen to us, because in his mind, we are there to sell.
If he devotes 1 hour to us, it means that he needs to talk, to open up, to be sure that, the person in front of him, that is us, is really interested in him.
Sales strategies: the survey
How did you build your company?
What was your dream as an entrepreneur?
What difficulties did you have to go through?
What were his goals?
Why did you decide to sell that particular product or service?
These are just some of the questions we can ask. There are really many, if we are really interested in finding out who we are dealing with.
And that’s how, magically, we go from a state of absolute detachment, between us and the interlocutor, to an open relationship.
Where the person in front of us, is willing to open up and explain to us what he or she really needs.
It starts a relationship of trust, which cannot be betrayed in any way.
And that’s how, after two hours of interviewing, we discover that, our products and services, cannot help the entrepreneur in front of us.
We have two alternatives:
- Ignore that fact and sell him something. We betray his trust, make a spot sale, and we have played that person and that customer forever.
- We tell him that we cannot be of help to him because our products or services cannot solve his problem. We win his trust. We simply shifted the sale in time, because after a month, six months, a year, that entrepreneur will need our services or products and then he will be the one to contact us. We have done his good. He will remember us.
Sales team: don’t be in a hurry to sell
In summary. We must not be in a hurry to close the sale. We don’t do to others what we wouldn’t want done to us.
Think about how many times you’ve come across a salesperson. One of those stormy ones. One of those who throws up his entire product catalog at you.
What were you thinking?
“But does this one understand what I need?”
“Does he understand that I am not interested in his products?”
“Why don’t you ask me why I agreed to meet with him?”
After five minutes you were already thinking about something else and couldn’t wait for that salesman to leave your office.
Here try to think if that salesman had been genuinely interested in you.
If he had taken the time to understand how you were, what you were thinking, what desires you had. What would you have thought of him?
To do right by your possible Client you must find out his purpose and his downfall
When we are making a sale, are we really relating to our interlocutor? Do we really know what they want from us?
In order to make a sale, it is essential to understand the goal (dream) of our interlocutor and the factor that is defined as “doom,” that is, the situation in which he or she is involved and which we can solve through our products and services.
This point is extremely important as people, are disinclined to open up, to communicate their goals and bane.
The second point is even more complicated than the first, both because it involves more openness and because, often times, people do not have a full awareness of their “ruins.”
Part of this was written during my training at OSM’s Mind Business School.
A school I recommend to all Entrepreneurs. It has profoundly changed my approach to life and business, greatly improving both.
It is important to say that, at OSM and at Mind Business School, selling is an activity that rests its foundation on Ethics. You sell if you can do right by your customer, otherwise you don’t sell.
Selling means taking responsibility for achieving agreed goals.
It means, give your customer your best and when possible, give a little more than what he expects. A concept that is called “exchange in abundance.”
I took the course Sales Techniques not to have more cartridges to use in the sales process but to improve understanding towards the entrepreneur.
Understand in even greater depth his real needs and goals.
Basically to do “his good.”
Because he simply might decide not to avail himself of my counseling, not because he does not need it, but because I have not been able to understand him. And that would be his real downfall.
Let’s delve into the concept of Purpose and Ruin from Mind Business School.
As we said in the opening of this article, to make a sale it is essential to understand two elements..:
- The goal (dream) of our interlocutor
- The factor that is defined as “ruin,” that is, the situation in which they are involved and which we can solve through our products and services.
Example.
Cremonesi I meet with her but I anticipate that I am only doing this out of curiosity (apparent purpose) and that at this time my company has absolutely no need of her services (not spoiling).
We start talking, I ask a lot of questions, I get really interested in what he thinks, wants and desires. The approach changes to:
I wouldn’t mind increasing turnover even if it’s not strictly necessary (a near-purpose), but I have little time to devote to studying a strategy (near-ruin).
We keep talking, I ask him so many more questions and his attitude changes to:
I would really need to increase margins by 12% (goal) and I need your services to achieve this goal (ruin), so you prepare a plan for me based on what we talked about.
What happened?
By entering into a relationship with the person, and making an initial inquiry I really understand his motivations.
By relating to him, showing real interest and taking on his problems, I have the opportunity to really understand what his goals and ruins are.
We must never settle for the first thing we are told.
The key element to always keep in mind is total respect for the Client.
If we are not able to do his good. If our products or services cannot really help him, we simply do not sell anything.
Sales strategies: the 8 rules for creating a valuable relationship with a customer
Listening is the key element in understanding all that “we are not told.”
And so it is that I gradually wrote myself a small “natural” set list, that is, one that I use each time without forcing.
It simply comes naturally to me to apply these rules:
Rule 1: Before meeting a possible new Client, I try to understand who they are
It only takes 10 minutes on Google and social media to find so much useful information:
- How is your company positioned
- What kind of reputation does he have
- Any comments and reviews posted by users and/or customers.
Rule 2: I listen, ask, read her body language, ask questions
Listening is the most important stage in selling effectively and with respect to the customer.
Only if you put yourself in the shoes of the person in front of you can you really understand his or her needs.
Starting a new relationship by rattling off the products or services we can sell them is not effective at all.
Listening allows us to create empathy. Listening allows us to get inside the person’s head, to understand what they really need.
Technically this cognitive phase is called small talk. It is only after 20 to 30 minutes of conversation that our interlocutor is really willing to talk to us about his needs and, possibly, his problems.
I love small talk, not to figure out what I can sell to my interlocutor, but what I can of do that is really useful and differentiating for him.
I believe that, my work, is meaningful only if I can make a difference.
Rule 3: I try to understand why he is making that precise request of me.
As we used to say, the “unspoken things” are more important than those explicitly communicated.
In conversation/communication nothing is ever left to chance.
Probably, if we devote interest, concentration and dedication to the conversation, we will find that our interlocutor is telling “a lot of half-truths.”
As the saying goes, he is skirting around the point. Only when he feels that he can trust us then he gets to the point.
Often times we have to carry it ourselves.
How? asking him
- How come he said that particular thing?
- What doesn’t make him feel peaceful?
- Why do you fear that you will not achieve your goals?
Rule 4: Trying to find out if this is really what he wants
As we saw earlier, to do right by your client or potential client, you must find out his or her purpose and undoing. This is one of the fundamental elements of Ethical Business.
This point is extremely important as people, are disinclined to open up, to communicate their goals and bane.
That is why I try to find out if, what he is asking of me, is really what he wants. Only by discovering his “undoing” can I help him achieve his goals.
Rule 5: I don’t try to sell “what I have in stock”
We mentioned this point earlier as well.
Assault salespeople, the ones with a lower-case “v,” leave you just long enough to sip your coffee.
Then they start talking to you about all the products and services they can offer you.
Calculating that the attention span, the real one, lasts only a few minutes, the speaker has already stopped listening to you. He can’t wait for you to finish the exposition to take leave of you.
If we sell what we have in stock we are solving our own problem.
Rule 6: A good deal is, only when we both reach our goal
The winning sales strategy is one defined as “win win” that is, where both parties “win”. They have the right interest/return.
That is why I “sell” only what allows, the new Customer, to reach his goal.
A spot sale does not generate good for either me or the Customer, because both of us would be unhappy.
Rule 7: I propose, to the extent possible, only measurable and tangible activities
Especially in marketing, measuring the effectiveness of actions taken, is a key element.
Every euro invested in strategies, marketing, communication, campaigns must generate a return that can be:
- Tangible: increased sales, quotes, contacts, margins etc.
- Intangible: increased notoriety, customer satisfaction and loyalty rate, Brand Awareness etc.
Rule 8: Be fair. Always pay
This rule can be as simple as it is difficult to explain.
The desire or the need, to make an immediate sale, are never a good solution.
I don’t want to appear a saint, much less a perfect person.
The principle I am inspired by is what is called the law of Cause and Effect.
“You reap what you sow. What we put into the universe is what comes back to us.”
The world is governed by this law, we can apply it because we believe in it or simply in a preventive form 😂
Donato Cremonesi
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