“New Age Selling” for “New Age Customers”

“New Age Selling” for “New Age Customers”:

This week I have been focusing almost entirely on what I think we should term “new age selling” – if you missed any of the posts, please do scroll down and you can catch up.

What we do know, is that the traditional customer call once seemed indispensable to the selling process – the time and expense involved were just a basic cost of doing business. In recent years, however, the business community has come to regard the sales call as an expenditure for which there are substitutes. For many companies telemarketing, video conferencing and direct e-mail, have made the sales call a choice, not an inevitability.

This is not surprising when various studies suggest that getting one sales person in front of one customer now costs $1500 – this cost has trebled since 1993. As a consequence, professional salespeople have to be more effective than ever to justify the investment in a face to face effort.

In essence, we can draw several conclusions, and today, I wish to highlight just one of them. Taken together, these findings paint a picture of the current state of the sales environment.

Customer Focus Creates Competitive Advantage

The one term that sets top performers apart – customer focus.

Outstanding sales results depend on:

• The ability to think from the customer’s point of view – this not only requires empathy, but also commercial band-width.

• Understanding the customer’s agenda, buying cycle and best interests – think “buying cycle” rather than “sales cycle”

• Beyond a superficial reading of immediate customer needs, salespeople must gain a deeper understanding of both the buyer’s long-term goals and the overall business climate– seeking out their commercial objectives.

• At the heart of customer focus is the art of listening constructively – the best salespeople are masters at capturing information – the essential information. They listen as much for what is not being said, as what is said.

• Customer focus means taking the customer seriously – today, the salesperson who clings to the product orientation of a decade ago is losing ground – customer’s do not buy products, they buy solutions that match their needs and that ease their pain.

• As client companies branch into new markets and unfamiliar territories, they are demanding unique, flexible solutions from their vendors – customised to support specific goals.

• Another myth which can be exploded is that whilst customers value flexibility, being too flexible can undermine the sales relationship. On the whole, salespeople imagine that customers value a vendor’s responsiveness above all. However, recent research shows that their primary concern is reliability. Being “nice” at the foreplay stage is no longer enough.

In summary, in order to maintain customer focus, the best salespeople become facilitators – creating a partnership that extends the selling relationship within the customer’s company.

The motivation to achieve this should be strong – it now costs fifteen times as much to attract and sell to a new customer as it does to an existing one!

Tomorrow, I’ll share with you how “exceptional” sales professionals are adapting and thriving.

News: I have just recorded two new brand new, short, sharp, and very relevant interviews for you to download and listen to – “What’s the Value of Cold Calling” with Mark Hunter and “Coaching, Managing, Training – What’s the Difference?” with Anthony Iannarino