I had the
pleasure a couple of weeks ago of hearing a great presentation by US Vistage
speaker, Ian Altman, on his theory of sales called Upside Down Selling.
There are
multifarious articles, books, blogs, videos and much else on sales and selling
but Ian treats the whole matter in a really uncomplicated manner with tips and
angles to help along the way.
One of the
basic factors is the fact that selling is not telling. It consists of asking pertinent questions and
then allowing the customer to bring out the issues.
In other words,
sales people do not sell as such. They
are, in fact, problem solvers on behalf of the customer.
Think about
it. Every need of any of us relates to
an issue that needs to be solved. Even
if we find a hole in a sock and decide to buy another pair, then the vendor is
solving a problem for us.
The trick is to
uncover that particular need so that the problem can be solved to the mutual
satisfaction of the customer and the vendor.
To illustrate
this, I recall that now many years ago I was in darkest Accrington with my old
sales mentor, Phil Copp, the sage of Wythenshawe. We found ourselves outside one of the many
cotton
weaving mills
in the town. Phil stopped the car, got
out slowly (he never leapt anywhere if he could help it), sniffed the air and
said in commanding tones:
“Come on, we have business
to do here!”
We went into
reception and Phil demanded to see the works engineer who eventually appeared
in his oily boiler suit and wiping his hands on a filthy rag.
Phil immediately
told the engineer that he was running a particular process and he knew that
they would be having problems with it.
Slightly
surprised, the engineer agreed and Phil then demanded to go down into the shop
to look over this process. He told the
engineer that he could solve the problem and sure enough, he did just that.
He could smell
the problem and he could and did solve the problem.
That takes a
large measure of experience to say the least but by asking the right questions
any similar problem can generally be identified.
The key to all
this is top understand that when a customer calls us they are doing so because
they have a problem and they want someone to solve it for them. This is one of the universal great truths of
selling and sadly we often miss the opportunity.
If we sell to a
customer based on our knowledge of our product or service that we offer then we
are arrogantly assuming that we know best and we know better than the customer
what they want.
If, however, we
look back at our business from the outside we can see then precisely what the
customer needs and to do that we will have to ask the aforesaid pertinent
questions.
We need to
discover why people need us, not what it is that we are selling to them.
Asking
questions like this will uncover and satisfy the needs of perhaps 50% of
customers and that is a high hit rate.
Remember,
telling isn’t selling. It is the problem
solving that entices the customer into doing business with us. It is WHY they need us, not WHAT we are
selling.
Download my book "Leading to Success" from Amazon
Visit the Vistage UK Website
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