In today’s time when the customer is highly aware and has all the information at a click of a button, targeting the audience has become a tough nut to crack.
Today salespeople are leaving no stone unturned to woo a customer and they approach their audience with a very appealing, powerful sales pitch, PowerPoint presentations and use very impactful phrases to convince the customer to buy, but still most of the times they fail at it.
- What is the reason behind this?
- Why sales order keeps eluding from salespeople?
- Why even after delivering the best sales pitch, the prospect is not interested?
- In spite of being the most suitable product the customer does not buy it?
If you are curious to know their answers, then you must read further to understand better.
Friends, most of the salespeople ignore the fact that the customers buy because of their reasons and not because of the salesperson’s reasons, and this is the most obvious fact in the world of selling which is ignored by most of the salespeople.
To understand your customers’ reasons, you need not create a word-perfect sales pitch.
Help them take a well informed decision by providing all the relevant information and explain how your offer is going to fulfill their requirements. You also need to research why your potential customer is dissatisfied with the existing supplier and whether you will be able to fulfill those gaps and meet his requirements.
Following are some of the prime reasons because of which customer tends to buy any product:
1. Unfulfilled Need: The topmost reason is that he has some unfulfilled need, desire, or want which he thinks that your product may be able to fulfill. As a salesperson it is your responsibility to understand, what is the most important need he is looking for to fulfill. The bigger is the urgency of the need, the faster will be chances that he will place the order for the product.
2. Desire to solve a problem: The customer may be facing a problem which he thinks your product category may help in resolving. So as a salesperson you need to explore what this problem is and you should be able to explain you customer, how your product is going to resolve the problem under consideration.
3. Fear: Many times, a customer buys because of the fear. Fear is one of the frequently experienced emotions. The customer may not talk about his fear explicitly but as a salesperson you need to understand whether a customer is wanting to buy to remove some of his fears and accordingly offer your product to him.
4. Want to earn high profits: Many times, the customer, especially a B2B customer buys, because he wants to earn high profits. So, his greed is driving him to make the decision for purchase.
5. Pride or vanity: Customers also buy because they want to feel proud after buying your products. Lots of customers buy only from big brands because of this reason. So, if your product is meeting some of his Pride or Vanity requirements you can accordingly sell him.
6. Peace of mind: This is another important reason, why the customer buys. As a salesperson you can always tell him how his peace of mind can be restored or can be ensured after buying your product.
Identifying these key decision-making factors for your customer in a particular situation can be a challenging task at times. And hence you need to have certain competencies, which we have decoded for you:
1.Researching for the customer requirements:
A salesperson must do proper preparation before visiting the potential buyer. In the absence of this preparation, you will work only as a traditional salesperson and you will depend mainly on your sales pitch, and you will ignore the actual requirements of the buyer. This is where most of the salespeople fail because they cut corners in preparation. There are various methods which are used in researching the customer’s requirements. The internet is one of the common methods which can be effectively used for researching on your customer’s requirements.
2.Questioning skills:
It is said that there is no skill in answering rather if you can ask the right questions, you are skillful. The effective salespeople are skilled in art of asking questions. They prepare themselves to ask right questions which will help them to get the right answers or so that they can understand the customer’s requirements properly and accordingly they can offer their products to the customer.
3.Listening skills:
This is a common belief that a salesperson needs to speak more to be in control of the sales call. But the more you speak the more you will lose control of the selling process. So it is advised that the salespeople must have very effective listening skills, so that they can listened to understand the customer’s requirements and accordingly offer the product.
4.Storytelling:
Storytelling is the best way to present your case to the customer. But not every salesperson knows the art of storytelling. The salesperson must have several success stories which act as suitable answers to customer’s situation. Stories work very well to handle customer’s objections
CONCLUSION
So next time when you are getting ready to meet the potential buyer you need to ask yourself, whether you have the above mentioned four competencies. You also need to get ready to explore the customer’s reasons for buying your product. Also, you need to prepare with the relevant stories to convince your customer that his requirements are fully made by your product.
Happy selling
