Fully Engaging With Buyers
Engaging with potential clients is one of those things that requires sales people to both suck and blow at the same time; not simple, but doable.
On the one hand you want to be client focused, thinking less about the ultimate sale and more about fully engaging with the buyer. This involves a full Discovery of the buyer’s objectives and environment, and more. On the other hand, you also need to drive revenue for your company, acquiring new accounts which by nature are either already buying from someone else, or are not buyers at the moment you are trying to engage them.
The bridge between the two is in the preparation in advance of the initial call, and the entire Discovery process. At the minimum you have to have a strong grasp of two things, first the specific value your product or service has delivered to other organizations similar to the buyer you are trying to engage. Second, know the specific issues and objectives your buyer is dealing with and is trying to achieve. These two are not sequential, but unfold in a single flow, this is key, because you have to allow the buyer to get involved, engaged, which means you need to adopt a fluid approach rather than a linear step by step approach. How do you do that? Once you have handle on these you then need to connect them by formulating questions, the kind of questions that will to be sure fully engage the buyer, not just get them interested, but engaged as in wanting to go further with process on their own rather than being pulled along.
We all know and accept that questions are the tools for success in engaging clients. Questions, the right questions, get people to reflect and reckon, and once you get them thinking about something relevant to them, they respond and add questions of their own, which leads to conversation and engagement.
The first, knowing successes and value delivered may seem simple, but there is more to it than many sales people are willing to do. Most will rely on leveraging the “value propositions” prepared marketing departments. Excellent start, but often too high level, you need to spend time and know what the specific outcomes for your clients have been and talk to those. The more quantifiable you can make it the better. Now here is the twist, once you know, you have to develop a questioning routine that will raise the issue you want to butt, and in he conversation that ensues you will be in a position to “demonstrate” (this is why specifics and quantifiable, data based examples are needed) the value, and get the customer to engage.
The second helps you set up questions that will help the results captured above resonate with potential buyers. People often talk about solutions, but by definition, solutions address a objective, or in common sales speak, a “need”, a “pain”, etc. Unless you talk to issues that are core to the buyer, they will not give you the opportunity to engage, because they will not want to have a conversation about things that are not core to them then and there, they have too many other things to do. Either you talk about things on top of their hit parade, or you won’t be talking for long, which is not engaging.
When you are able to combine and maser these two, you will find two things. One is that you will feel much more confident in your approach and ensuing conversation. Second you will be in a much better position to truly listen to the buyer, which makes for better conversation and by extension engagement. When you have these under control your interview technique will evolve to where as a replacement for of thinking about what you are going to say next, you will be listening to the other person, and thinking what you can question next based on what they said and your experience. As a result each question builds engagement. Feel free to contact me if you would like specific examples of this technique.
The process is straight forward, but don’t take that to mean simple. It requires that you know where you have delivered specific value to your customers, why they buy from you, what makes you uncommon, and why despite of price or other factors you continue to win deals. I guess what I am saying is you will have to do some work, talk to unfilled clients, know trends, and be aware of business or role based issues. But once you do the work, and get into the habit of understanding what makes you successful, it will pay dividends.
One last thought, if you are a new sales person, or new to a product line, you can still use this, you just have to use some of your colleagues and some of their clients to learn the data. In some cases you can use testimonials or case studies, but just make sure they have some meat, as opposed to high level flowery statements. Talk to the successful sales people to know what the issues facing buyers are, talk to unfilled clients, even if you just adopted them, hey, they will se it as customer care, someone taking an interest in their world and trying to sell something right then and there, wow. The goal is to learn, prepare, review, and do it again, often.