HOW TO SELL WHEN THE CUSTOMER IS IN CHARGE OF THE
SALE
by John Graham
It only takes a few words to describe the dramatic change that confronts every salesperson today. The customer is in charge of the sale, not the salesperson. Whether it’s who gets the sale, when the order will be placed, product specifications, or price, the customer is calling the shots. The salesperson’s role is to expedite the customer’s decisions, not to influence the process, as in the past.
What has changed? The answer may seem obvious, but people in sales find it difficult to accept-the customer has discovered that “the Internet will set you free.” Every salesperson has walked into a meeting to make a presentation and discovered that the customer already knows about the advantages and disadvantages of a group of competitive products.
Still, many sales managers continue to urge their reps to get in front of more customers and stay there until they get a signed order.
Today, as in the past, salespeople try to figure out ways to hook the customer. They try to establish rapport and identify the customer’s “hot buttons.” They dial the telephone and ask in a friendly voice, “Do you want to save money?” or “All I need is 20 minutes of your time to show you what we can do for you. Would tomorrow at 2:00 p.m. be best or Wednesday at 10:00 a.m.?” or “Are you the person who’s responsible for making the insurance decisions?” or “Last week I sent you a letter about our company. I want to make sure you received it. Do you have any questions?” Salespeople are pursuing prospects as if nothing has changed.
This is not only inefficient and expensive, it’s also ineffective. Salespeople will admit that their number-one challenge is getting through the door for the appointment. If they get in, they’re defenseless in the face of an empowered prospect who takes charge of the selling process.
Telling salespeople to “do it faster, do it better; get up and get going” won’t meet this challenge. As the situation intensifies, American businesses futilely spend millions of additional dollars trying to motivate their salespeople. Their mistake is in assuming that it’s the salespeople’s fault, that they are not doing their best. With the customer is in charge of the sale, though, the salespeople aren’t to blame.
When the tables are turned, the selling philosophy must change. In the past, motivating the sales force was helpful. No longer. Ask sales reps what they want most and they’ll say: “Good, solid leads.” They want to sell, and they need motivated prospects to do so. Salespeople will have more than sufficient motivation to improve their skills and sell at top speed if they have prospects who want to talk with them.
Now comes the clincher: If the motivated prospect offers a salesperson the ideal selling opportunity, why do businesses fail to establish programs that produce the desired results? Why do they try to change the sales force when they should be developing the prospects? Since we know what works, why do we continue to shoot ourselves in the foot?
A salesperson’s only worthwhile approach is to get the customer or prospect to want to do business with them. Instead of the salesperson spending time trying to find more customers, the new sales situation requires the customers to find the salesperson because they want what’s being offered. In the 1990s, it wasn’t “what you know, but who you know” that led to success. Now the key to success is “who knows you.”
To make more sales, the job is to motive the prospect or customer to want to do business with you-to know you. The process has five parts:
1. Identify the correct customers.
Too many businesses fail at prospecting because they haven’t targeted as precisely as possible who they want to do business with. They’re so intent on getting through the door that they don’t care who’s on the other side.
Identifying prospects is a demanding, multifaceted process. In the race to make sales, this step might seem unnecessary and a waste of time. The worst assumption is expressed by these words: “We know our customers.”
Developing in-depth profiles of prospects that fit the various niches of your business is crucial. It’s essential for you to know exactly who you want to motivate to do business with you.
2. Understand the prospect’s wants and needs.
If the customer is in charge of the sale, it’s lethal to assume that you know what they want and how to deal with them. “Our customers want good service and the lowest possible price. That’s it,” the sales manager of a medical gases firm reported. A survey of the company’s customers revealed a different picture. Complaints about scratched and dirty cylinders, late deliveries, and unresponsive equipment repair service topped their list of concerns -- price wasn’t an issue. Unfortunately, the sales manager didn’t know what “good service” meant to his customers.
When a data-processing firm recognized that many of its customers were downsizing, it saw this change as an opportunity to offer a forms inventory service. This outsourcing helped retain and attract customers.
3. Pull the customer to you.
Once you clearly understand what drives the customer, create a “magnetic field” that pulls customers to you. Present your company as valuable, relevant, and unequaled as a customer resource. Create this image with E-mail messages, a Web site with helpful information, and a system that makes ordering easy. Consider sending highly-focused direct mail, publishing niche-market newsletters, holding seminars, advertising, and distributing by-lined articles to trade, business and consumer publications.
The key is to let customers know that you understand their businesses, the issues that they face, and the steps that they should take to make their businesses more successful. The goal is to get them to want to do business with you and to give them a way to respond. Create a “buying environment” that sets the stage for the prospect to perceive the salesperson as a partner.
The results can be immediate. One insurance agency used an 800 number to institute extended hours for its customers and prospects and got calls immediately. A medical-office remodeling firm got more than a 10.5% response the first week after a direct-mail promotion. Then again, the president of a security firm once heard from a retail chain-store CEO two years after an article by the president appeared in a trade journal. “I knew the time would come when I would need you,” commented the CEO, who’d saved the article.
Your task is to get inside your customer’s mind and be there when the customer gets ready.
4. Be persistent.
Most sales are lost because the salesperson quits too soon, dropping the prospect who doesn’t buy according to the salesperson’s schedule. With the customer in charge of the sale, it’s essential to stay close. Once you’ve created your company’s “magnetic field” to pull in the customer, the job is to keep pulling.
One company reviews its prospects weekly and determines its next step with each one by examining what’s happening with each one. The company call this its “who’s going to do what to whom” session.
Also, look for new ways to enlarge your “magnetic field” by identifying and focusing on additional prospect niches or extending your pull beyond your current marketing area. You need to constantly seek new opportunities to pull customers to your company, product, or service.
5. Keep your hands on the prospecting controls.
An all-too-prevalent tendency in business is to view everything as a project an activity with a definable scope and time frame. This leads to viewing every activity as terminal” that the idea is to complete one project and move on to another.
But marketing and sales aren’t projects, they’re part of your company’s ongoing operations. They don’t get “turned up” when business is down or minimized because sales are strong. If you turn off your “magnetic field,” there might b a residual effect, but your pull diminishes rapidly as competitors step in to fill the void.
CONCLUSION
Implementing this five-step process changes the selling process. It recognizes that the customer is in charge of the sale by aligning with the prospect’s interests. More specifically, a company that follows this process positions itself and its salespeople so that prospects value them. This approach also proves the inaccuracy of the idea that “nothing happens until someone sells something.” There’s a different concept at the heart of selling today: Nothing happens until someone wants to buy something. Then the professional salesperson is in business!