Outdated selling is about convincing (tricking) a buyer to buy. At best, that style creates either a non-buyer or a reluctant buyer. And if you are lucky you’ll occasionally stumble into the perfect prospect and that sale takes care of itself. But what about doing things in a way that causes the buyer WANT what you have? I mean really want it!
It’s more simple than you might think. In fact, I’ll give you one word that pretty much sums it up: RELEVANCE.
How do we become more relevant? I hope it goes without saying that you must to know your product or service inside and out. Next you do your research. Seek to understand your prospects industry, competitors, market forces, challenges, opportunities and other aspects of their business. The more of this knowledge you gain, the more “relevant” you become. Add to that even more knowledge about your prospects specific company, and also your prospect himself/herself and your potential relevance is now even higher. Think Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter.
This knowledge will allow you to frame every question or statement in a way that is far more relevant to your prospect. You’ll be speaking their language and relating to them in ways they will recognize as genuine. You’ll be able to drop facts and comments into the dialog that show your prospect that you care enough about them and their needs to have done your research beforehand. In short, you’ll be relevant.
And being relevant relaxes your prospect and allows for a truly meaningful exchange. In this way, you are best positioned to quickly uncover needs and express your solutions without the “sales resistance” typical of most prospects.
Put another way, in the all-important initial meeting, use your relevance to establish a genuine rapport and get down to the business of uncovering your prospects needs. Whether their struggles are positive, negative, or both, once you know, you can discuss how you can help them. And because you have become relevant, you will have their full attention throughout the meeting.
Conversely, if you are not relevant and just keep trying to “sell” them something, you’ll find them daydreaming, looking at their watch and looking forward to your departure.
So you have to be relevant to hold their attention. Also, forget value. Your prospect gets to decide that one. They see value in things that make their struggles/problems go away. Little struggles = little value. big struggles = big value. So think in terms of relevance instead of value. If your solution is highly relevant to your prospects situation, they will place great value on it and more importantly, they’ll WANT IT.
If, however, your solution offers no relevance to your prospects needs, it’s time to move on. Simple as that. Don’t try to create a connection where there is none. You and your solution are either relevant or not.
If you have true solutions to offer, you now must master is the relevance of the solutions you propose. You may have 20 great solutions within your offering and you know they all would help your prospect. But here again, relevance is the key. Limit your discussions to those solutions that your prospect (not you) see as relevant to their needs. Forget about all the rest. I know it’s hard to do but trust me; prospects don’t care about all your other “stuff.” The moment you start talking about things that don’t address their burning needs, that’s the moment you start losing them. In fact, you may have them dying to buy from you after discussing 3 or 4 solid rock solid, relevant solutions, but if you go on talking about things that are, in your prospects mind, not relevant, you’ll probably lose the deal. What a disaster! You were positioned to really help them, and then you chased them away!
So relevance really boils down to a simple formula:
Doing your research ahead of time in a way that allows you to quickly identify your prospects most pressing needs, then presenting those aspects of your solution, with relevance, that directly address and solve those struggles.
The more needs you find, the more solutions you can offer. And the more RELEVANT solutions you offer the more your prospect is going to WANT to do business with you.
It’s all about knowing your prospect and what they need. It’s about knowing your product & what it has to offer. It’s about having options for your prospect and it’s about presenting them in a perfectly RELEVANT way that creates the desire to do business with you.
So start thinking about how relevant you are in every aspect of your sales process. Relevance creates desire and desire creates sales!
Onward & Upward!
Ben