There are two factors that motivate customers to buy. They are pain or pleasure. Pain motivates more than pleasure. Unless your customers are experiencing enough pain there is no reason to do anything about it. Yet, just experiencing pain is insufficient to motivate a customer to do something about it and buy. You have to be very clear about how much pain he’s experiencing. … [Read more...]
Don’t try this at home…
Remember those commercials that showed dangerous activities? There was always a small caption that said "Don't try this at home." If you're watching/reading the news, you also don't want to try what they're doing in your selling. Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said about the US-Syria foreign policy, "Putin is playing chess, … [Read more...]
Are you getting ripped off?
Does your sales process include submitting proposals? Does the proposal include a road map of the solution to your prospect's problem? That's dangerous. Your prospect could take your expertise and shop it to the lowest bidder. That has to stop. I understand that you want to demonstrate your expertise in the proposal. You can do this without giving your knowledge away. In … [Read more...]
Sell more when you quantify a customer’s problem.
You probably know that for a customer to buy something from you, there has to be a problem or a need. The customer can do nothing (and often does) unless there is a problem to solve or a need to fill. If you’re executing an effective questioning strategy, you are uncovering your customer’s need or pain. You might have found that your products can reduce downtime, reduce … [Read more...]
Sales Managers Need to Manage.
Imagine yourself at a sales meeting talking about a prospect and your current sales status. You ask for an update from one of your sales team members on Company XYZ and the contact, Mr. Smith. At the next sales meeting you ask for an update. You get a dumbfounded look. Why? There is no Mr. Smith. There are too many sales managers who get sold. What they're buying is an … [Read more...]
Could you create copycat buyers?
Copycats are a good thing. Social copying is the phenomenon of looking to other people to show us what to do. That's what a TV track taps into. It shows us where to laugh and we feel better knowing that we’re part of the group. We also eat at crowded restaurants because it allows us to copy the other people who have chosen what we believe to be a good restaurant. Think of … [Read more...]