I well recall a young lady who came to us for a sales
position and she told us that she would be ideal for the job as she “had the gift of the gab”. She was right. End of interview.
It seems to me that not only do we need to ask pertinent
questions and then listen but we also need to be very aware of what might be
called buying signals from the buyer. I
am using that description although it encompasses any individual sitting across
the table in a sales pitch and they can be in any function of their business,
not only in the Purchasing role.
Again I remember being taken to a sales call with a senior
colleague a lot of years ago and I was there to learn from the master. He started out by showing the buyer our
brochure with some lovely photographs of the Managing Director and the factory
and eventually got round to discussing the reason for the call.
The buyer listened to the sales pitch which had been
delivered without any reference to his possible needs and started to nod from
time to time and make interested noises.
This is called a “buying
signal” and the great sales people like my old sales mentor, Phil Copp, the
Sage of Wythenshawe would immediately take the hint and start in on the detail
and possible ways in which we could help to solve a problem.
Not my senior colleague.
He prattled on until the buyer’s eyes started to glaze over as he looked
at his watch and shuffled some papers. Even then my colleague didn’t take the
hint until we were courteously but firmly shown the door. My colleague appeared satisfied with this
result and said that we would meet again in a couple of months time etc etc etc
and off we went.
The moral of the story?
Not only do we need to ask questions and then listen but we also need to
keep a very close eye on how the buyer reacts to information.
In fact I was given a great mnemonic this week to ensure
that we do just that. It is:
· AIDA
which stands for Awareness, Interest,
Desire, Action those being the stages through which any buyer would pass
during the sales pitch. That is would
IDEALLY pas.
The initial route is to ask relevant questions to elicit, if
at all possible, the level of need on the part of the buyer followed by at
least a modicum of information to create the awareness of your product or
service, always answering the WIIFM (what’s in it for me?) question.
At this stage we need to look out for expressions of
interest and ideally expressions of desire (that would do the job, it sounds
just right for us, how much?) and so on.
Finally there is the action phase and surprisingly that
seems to be the one which gives so many sales people the biggest problems.
Heaven protect us from those sales people who create great
relationships and don’t ever close them out. In the end, we have to Ask For The
Order (another acronym - AFTO) and there are many ways in which to do that.
The key to the whole discussion of effective selling
techniques is to realise that we don’t sell, but people buy from us. They are in the driving seat and it behoves
us to use that charming lady, AIDA to encourage the buyer along the path to
success (ours, that is).
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