Bumi Jembola
It is only natural to focus all our energy on why the customer should buy from us: our value propositions, competitive advantage and relevance of the product. But many times the “whys” will not help you sell. At any rate, product knowledge, value proposition, features and benefits are very fundamental to selling. If you do not know and talk about all that you should not be in sales. You should just resign and go home!
Experience has shown however that you will sell a lot more if you focus as much attention on the “why not”. Why will the customer NOT buy? What are the most common and may be; valid reasons for objecting to the sale you are intending to make? May be you should focus a little bit of energy on them. Write them down. Write down the 5 top objections to sales for each of your products and deal with them.
There are three ways that this will help you:
One, it will give you a clearer picture of your ideal customer- When a particular class of customer persistently say they do not find your product relevant it may truly not be relevant to them irrespective of whether your company built it for them.
The second benefit that your get from focusing on “why not” is a more relevant preparation. If you answer customer questions for yourself before you ever get in front of them then you are more likely to come across as someone who’s highly competent and in fact you will be more convincing.
Lastly, it clearly indicates to the customer that they are VERY important and you need them. Many times, the “why not” will take you beyond your routine obligations. It will require that you do something more than the normal call of duty. In certain instances the “why not” will be peculiar to a single customer and you will need to fix it. At that point if you keep trying to sell thinking you can evade that objection, the prospect will withdraw. It is a clear sign you are not listening. You just want to sell.