There's a lot going on when a sale is made - a
lot that happened to get to that magical point
where the customer reaches into her Coach bi-fold
and hands over her plastic. How did she get to
that point? What made her choose your product
over all the others she could have purchased? Was
it the advertising? The features of the product
itself? Her mood? The persuasiveness of your
sales staff? The behavior of consumers is
complex, but there is a systematic set of steps
you can take to help turn browsers into buyers
Step-By-Step…
Assume you're at a party and you spot an
attractive person hanging out by the hummus and
pita tray. Assume further that you'd like to go
on a date with them, and that you have at least
marginal social skills. The first thing you say
to this person is probably not
"Hello-my-name-is-Jamie-would-you-like-to-go-out-to-dinner-with-me-next-Tuesday?"
(Even if your name is Jamie). Instead, there are
a series of intermediate steps you'll probably
take in order to increase your chances of landing
the date. Selling is like that, too; it's a
systematic, multi-stage process. There are
several systematic processes that are effective,
but our focus here will be on a process that is
highly customer-focused. The steps are outlined below.
1) Establish Rapport and Credibility
People do business with people they like and feel
they can trust. Your job is to make your customer
want to do business with you. Your job is not to
make your customer think you are smart, rich,
handsome, or really good at basketball, though
some of these may come in handy. How? It depends
on your customer. Let me explain…
Highly effective sales people (and sales
messages, for that matter) tend to be highly
adaptive to the customer - not the other way
around. If your customer is casual and low-key,
be casual and low-key. Perhaps use humor and
light conversation. If your customer is in a
hurry, cut the small talk and get right to
addressing their needs. If your customer likes to
talk about basketball, indulge him.
Adaptation can take place along two dimensions:
1) pace (fast versus slow) and 2) task or
relationship oriented-ness (build-relationship
versus get-right-to-business). Below is a
quick-reference chart for ideas on how to relate
to people along these dimensions.
Want to know which type you are? Click here to take a quick quiz.
ANALYTICAL PERSON
- Establish your credibility
- Give credentials
- Acknowledge their expert status DRIVEN PERSON
- Get down to business quickly
- Listen to their objectives
- Be personal, but reserved
AMIABLE PERSON
- Engage in informal talk
- Show interest in their work
- Reference people they may know EXPRESSIVE PERSON
- Talk about people
- Show interest in them as a person
- Let them talk
- Be entertaining
Pace ---> Faster
While you're involved in this process, now's a
good time to establish credibility as well. Some ways to do this:
Ask precise questions (it lets people know you've done your homework).
Listen intently and actively.
Don't be a know-it-all. That just pisses people off.
Deliver on your promises.
Ask confirmation questions that can be answered
'yes' or 'no,' and that demonstrate you
understand where the customer is in the decision process.
An example of a good confirmation question would
be "So you're looking for a color printer that's
good for printing digital photos, but you're not
sure about the value of some of the extra features on the high-end models?"
2) Gather Customer Information
This is potentially a very deep and involved
topic, worthy of it's own article or even
tutorial. For now, we'll stick to an overview of
typical areas of information weakness. The first
relates to changes and challenges in your
customer's industry. It's important to know the
relevant obstacles they face every day, know
their pain points, and try to understand how
their landscape may be changing. For example: if
you're selling office furniture, know what the
trends are in your target area. Are more
businesses moving toward "hoteling" space for
their employees? Are they getting away from
cubicle farms and moving back to traditional
offices? Maybe there are newly publicized
environmental concerns with fabric treatments, or
an energy crunch that may call for
energy-efficient lighting. Know what's on the
horizon for your customers and help them deal
with the trends and changes they face.
Another area that can be a potential information
void is an understanding of your customer's true
objectives and resource limitations. Fill the
void by learning what benefits they care about
most in your product. Customers buy based on
benefits, so be sure you understand what these
are. (For a review of what 'benefits' are, read
our tutorial "What do Customers Really Buy?")
Also, try to understand what influences their
buying decisions and what political and financial
factors affect their actual buying procedures.
Must they use a purchase order, or will they use
a company or personal credit card? Will they be
able to make the purchase decision on their own,
or will they need compelling facts about the
product to bring back to the decision maker at home or work?
Know your competition. This is basic marketing,
but cannot be stressed enough. Know where your
product lies on a snake plot as compared to your
competitors' product. (Need a review of what a
snake plot is? See our tutorial "Snakeplots for
Understanding Customer Perceptions.") Be frank
when you talk about relative advantages of your
product versus that of the competition. You can
emphasize the positives of your product,
certainly, but lying or exaggerating will only
erode the trust and credibility you built up
earlier, while you were talking about basketball.
Remember: customers buy for their own reasons,
not yours. Don't jam your perception of how
fabulous your product is down their throat.
Listen to what they care about most and address those points.
3) Propose Action
Your proposal for action is some sort of proposal
to purchase your product. The way to propose
action is to tell your story and let the buyer
decide. How do you 'tell your story?' You suggest
a solution and then convince your customer that
your solution/product can do what the competition
does, only better. The key here is that the
customer must perceive a distinction between your
product and the competition. The most effective
way to demonstrate distinction is to make sure that your proposed solution is:
Relevant to your customer's needs, which you
discovered through active listening and
questioning in the information-gathering stage.
Different from the actions/solutions/products
being offered by the competition.
Help the customer understand how your product
provides the benefits that are most important to
her. And then explain how it does so better than
the competition. You can't do this unless your
product has been positioned firmly and your sales
force is intimately familiar with your
positioning statement. (Need a review on
positioning? You guessed it… check out our
tutorial on the subject: "What is a Positioning Statement?").
4) Getting Commitment
Some degree of commitment is important at the end
of every sales-related encounter. If you don't
sense that you can close an ideal sale, try to
walk away with at least an incremental
commitment. For example, if your customer is not
ready to place a season's worth of orders for
your Levi's Super Low Hip-Huggers. Try to land a
commitment for a special, short-term promotional
order, or even to just set an appointment for her
to come to your office and look at more samples and discuss various options.
Side note: before you get to that point, it's
best to have already formulated some potential
commitments. I.e.; have an outline in your head
of your optimal commitment, your minimal
commitment, and a menu of creative options in between.
On the way to a commitment, you may encounter
objections. (Gasp!) To help get past these, try the following:
Before you sell, make a list of foreseeable
objections and develop solutions for them.
Always confirm and demonstrate you understand the objection.
Understand that obstacles exist because customers
perceive that they might 'lose' somehow; getting
around this will require an assessment of the customer's attitude.
Use questions to assess the customer's attitude,
such as "Is there anything about which you're uncertain?"
Once you understand the objection, you're better equipped to address it.
Some Final Thoughts
It's the customer who matters most; the customer
whose needs come first. Listen to them. Know what
benefits they care about, learn what their
concerns are, and focus on those. Be flexible and
adapt to your customer, don't expect her to adapt
to you. And remember, if you don't meet your
customers' needs, someone else will.
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