Sometimes it’s easier to lose the sale, these are just some of the typical traps the unwary fall into:
- Pushing your technical features, rather than drawing out the benefits for the customer. This at best bores and confuses the customer, at worst gives an impression of arrogance. And in any event is the basis for the customer’s perception that ‘Whatever they’re trying to sell me, it’s going to be EXPENSIVE’
- Failing to understand that there are other people in the customer organisation who are involved in the buying decision – not just your obvious operational contact.
- Lack of knowledge and practice about how to uncover customer needs (and not just factual, rational, logical, technical needs) through questioning and listening principles.
- People tend to buy on feelings, then rationalise their decision with facts and logic, not the other way round. Ignorance of how to interpret and react appropriately to non-verbal signals. The simple equation is: no rapport = no trust = no work.
- Inability to handle customer resistance, objections and complaints such as ‘It’s too expensive’, ‘We’re happy with our current supplier’, ‘We can do this ourselves’. This leads to unnecessary discounting (straight off the bottom line), surrendering to the competition, or worse still, arguing with the customer. Win the argument = Lose the sale.
- Misunderstanding what commitment is and how to ask for it – if you have no commitment from the customer you have nothing.
- Insensitivity to customer buying signals, thereby missing opportunities to add to current work and revenue streams
- Ignorance of how to help the customer to decide to act NOW – which means that projects are delayed, lost to the competition, or disappear into the black hole of procrastination.
- Failure to discover the value of what you are offering…that’s the value to the customer.
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