I am sure that you want to achieve and even exceed your sales targets this year. The way to make this possible for you, all starts with you choosing to no longer sell products or services anymore. I am sure that sounds crazy, how can you achieve your sales targets, if you stop selling the very things you need to sell to achieve your desired sales targets in the first place. Well what I am proposing is that you move your focus from products and services and instead focus on people and their needs instead.
Sales Success is about product Knowledge – Is it?
There are so many sales courses out there that push sales people to improve their product knowledge and increase their understanding around the benefits their products offer. These are both important factors, but neither of these is going to ever help you to close a sale. The only way to improve sales and to consistently close them, is to sell people on your product and service and never to try to sell products or services to people.
Great Sales Professionals, Know both People and their Products
Yes of course sales people must have an intimate knowledge of their products and services, but it is their knowledge of people, which will ultimately help them to close sales. I have encountered sales people, who have impeccable product knowledge, with an intimate understanding of all the features and benefits their products or services they sell offer, but they lack an understanding of people. This has limited their ability to close as many sales as they should. The most important thing any sale professional needs is an intimate understanding of people. You can never ever tell someone about all the features and benefits your product or service offers, if you do not understand people and their needs first.
People buy from People they Know, Like and Trust
Remember that people make buying decisions using their emotions, i.e sales is 80 % about people or about having an intimate understanding of people’s emotions, needs and wants and 20 % about the product or service you sell. Remember that the products and services you sell do not think, but the people you are trying to sell them to, most certainly do. They are looking at your product and service and asking, does this offer me a way to make some of my pain go away or is it going to satisfy one of my needs? Products and services do not think or offer any benefits on their own, it is the person making the purchase, who thinks, feels and reacts to the product and sees how it will serve them.
Do you Authentically Care about your Customer and their Needs?
I am sure that you have heard the saying which says ‘People do not care how much you know, until they know how much you care” When you realise that you are in the people business and that your products are secondary, only then will you turn the corner towards incredible sales success. See yourself in the business of helping people and no longer see yourself as being in the business of selling products and services. This subtle, but crucial shift will empower you to move away from feeling like someone, who is trying to close a sale every time you are in front of a customer and instead change you into someone, who helps people make the right decisions, which will help them to improve their life experience.
Know and Understand the Individual and their Needs
Become interested in the individual, the human being, who has a need or is facing a challenge, which your product or service can help eliminate and you will close far more sales. Both you and the buyer of your value proposition will receive a mutual benefit, fair exchange will have occurred and both parties will feel that they have won. This is a sure fire way of ensuring that you develop long term mutually beneficial relationships with your customers.
Lose the Sales Pitch
Sales success is never about launching into your planned sales pitch, listing all the benefits your products or services offer. It is about getting to know what the customer needs and how you can help them satisfy this need as painlessly as possible.
As a sales professional you must determine:
What the customer wants to achieve?
What is important to them?
What their needs are?
What it is that makes them feel good?
What do they really, Really, REALLY want?
The secret to closing almost every sale is about showing an interest in your client and never showing an interest in trying to sell your product or services to them. When someone is in need of a product or service, they do not care about how much product knowledge you have, they only care about themselves and their needs. They are concerned about their time, money and ensuring that they get the best possible deal for themselves. You and your product or service is way down on the buyers list of concerns.
Closing Sales
Closing sales is never about your sales process, your products and services or your commission; it is all about the customer and their needs and concerns. Once you realise this and focus on the person and never on the individual sales transaction, you will increase your closing rate exponentially and easily achieve and exceed your sales targets this year.
Andrew Horton is one of South Africa's top sales training experts. He will support, uplift and inspire sales professionals to explore the limits of their potential and awaken the sales giants, which resides within all of them. His sales training presentation is aimed at inspiring sales professionals, helping them to become re-energised and eager to achieve their sales targets. The sales tools and powerful tried and tested practical sales techniques, they will be introduced to during his presentation, will help any sales professional to immediately up their game and to become a real sales giant, within their markets. Visit my website at http://www.andrewhorton.co.za/sales-training