Speaker: Hi, and welcome to KeysToSuccessClub.com, and this short series where we explore the different elements that comprise success. Enjoy it!
Mark Taylor: Hi, it's Mark Taylor and this is an ongoing video series on business and business success, and today we are going to talk about effective selling.
Now, selling is the lifeblood of any business, and therefore creates a lot of interest in the market of effective selling. Selling has gone through an interesting cycle over the past number of years. From just the traditional cost selling or push selling philosophy, is being talked about a lot and replaced by more of a needs based selling philosophy; I will talk about those in a second.
The reality is that a lot of companies are still heavily based on the push selling philosophy rather than needs based philosophy, and we will talk a little bit more about that in terms of why in a few moments.
So let's first of all talk about the concept. So push selling is typically when you have pushed your solution out to the market. So your first contact is all about you, your product, your solution, your features, of your product. Needs based marketing is when your focus is on finding the needs of your customers, and before you then talk about your product. When you are trying to make sure you understand your needs and connect with your customer's needs in order to then fit a solution around those needs, and in which case if there's a good match there shouldn't be any traditional closing techniques required, because there will be a good synergy. So that's just more traditional needs based selling.
So very simply, you should find out what the needs of your customers are and then build a solution that's relevant to their need, and it's very simple. Now, the reason it doesn't happen very often is because there seems to be a human tendency to want to talk about yourself. If you go to sales meetings; I have been to hundreds and hundreds of sales meetings over the years, the tendency for most humans in a selling situation is to talk about themselves, talk about their product, and the moment a customer gives them a single signal they might potentially be interested, out comes 20 minutes of features on their product. So it seems to be a human tendency, which is why it's so tricky, which is to really show and want to be interested in your customer. If you have the attitude, you will find that the needs based selling is relatively straightforward.
So have a think about that within your business and see whether you have really got a needs based selling. Now, that can be from a face to face, but also look at the way you are connecting, from things like your website and any other selling messages that you have, and look at how many needs based questions there are, how it impacts on your customer, the benefits, rather than features and solutions, features and benefits of your company. So that's the difference. So look at that angle.
The second area I want to talk about is the sales model that you have got. So a traditional sales model, you have also got cold calling, which is effectively you are hoping that your product or offering is correct for the type of person.
Now, that can be very difficult to do, its expensive, and your hit rate is going to be very low in terms of being at the perfect time, when you will actually get a connection with your customer, who may or may not be in the market. So the best move you have got is to try and create an ongoing database or potential buyers. Don't worry about if they are ready to buy or not, but just capture them in some format.
Then you need to keep them engaged with your business, and then, at the right time when they have a particular problem, if they are engaged in communication with your business enough, then there will be a tie in of needs. So the difference there is trying to make sure you have a system in your business of getting a database, and this is also linked to the marketing, a database of people who potentially could buy your product or would be interested in your services. Then making sure you can mix them and getting that as wide as you can, so that you have people coming into you. That's more of a pull marketing system rather than cold calling approach.
So really have a look at how your marketing initiatives and your database building and your communication and your trust development of it, big database, is happening in your business rather than putting all your eggs into this cold calling. What you will find is you can create a very efficient system and high conversion rates, because people will be coming to you rather than you having to push to them.
So those are my two messages from the sales point of view.
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