For decades the most important words in marketing have been “free,” “sale,” and “guarantee.” Want to get someone’s attention in an advertisement? Tell them something is free or on sale. Want to jack up your closing rate? Increase the value of your guarantee.
Selling and marketing, however, are different animals. Marketing is getting the customer into your store or securing a meeting with them. Selling is closing the deal, making the sale, convincing the customer that your products and services are worth more to them than their money. Top producers know that selling is solving customers’ problems and fulfilling their needs and wants.
The next time you want to secure an appointment with a prospective customer, find out the problems, needs and wants your products and services will solve or can provide. If you sell forklifts, for example, it’s fair to think the solutions include the need to move materials around a warehouse setting in a safe, efficient and cost-effective manner.
The sales professional who shows the buyer how the benefits of the forklift – as well as the benefits of working with the seller’s company – will accomplish this will make a faster, higher-profit sale than the order taker who wastes the buyer’s time just listing the features of the machine. When you show the buyer the solutions to their problems needs and wants by selling your benefits, not features, you will also close the sale faster.
Take a step closer and discover the buyer’s individual problems, needs and wants and provide the solutions for them. All you have to do is ask. “Mr. Smith, what material handling problems are you looking to solve with a new forklift? What unique needs do you need to solve in your material handling process?”
It does not matter what product or service you sell. If you make it easier to solve your customers’ problems than your competition, then you’ll make the sale.
Now I know someone is thinking: “All my customers have the problem of not wanting to pay a fair price for my products and services.” I am the first to agree price is very important, but it’s an obstacle you can overcome.You overcome the price objection by increasing the benefits you provide the buyer. I know you have heard that time and time again. But now go one step further. Put a dollar value on your benefits. Now you’re not only addressing the customer’s problem (money) you are doing it with the benefits that will solve their other problems, needs and wants.
Here are four ways to turn your intangible benefits into a dollar amount that will show the consumer you offer a better value:
– Provide examples of how others have lost money when not using your benefit (horror stories).
– Provide testimonials showing the dollar value others put on your intangibles.
– Ask the customer what he/she feels the dollar value of your benefit is.
– Tell the customer the dollar value of your benefit. (You are the expert)
Here are a few steps to selling solutions:
– Determine the buyer’s problems, needs and wants (general and specific)
– Determine and create benefits that will solve those problems, needs and wants
– Put a dollar value on your benefits.
When you’re ready to make a sale, combine these steps with the closing techniques you like. You can find almost two dozen closing techniques in my book, “How To Take Customers Away From Your Competition.” Use discount code – PROFITCLUB – for 40 percent off the book.
