4 years ago, Pete Caputa suggested that salespeople should build their expertise publicly. This is another guest post by Imran Battla that shows you how it's done. Enjoy and tell him what you think in the comments and don't forget to use the icons below share it with your network.
If you are in sales, you have probably experienced the following on more than one occasion.
- You are close to finalizing the deal. You have gone through 8 questions and believe there is strong alignment. You are presenting a solution that solves their pain points and it should be a huge win for the client and a nice commission check for you, right?
- But the customer says no to a solution you think is as American as apple pie? So what gives? Why did the customer walk away? What would you do you if it happened to you?
Do you know what a Sales Rock Star would do?
You think, ‘Hey this is a no brainer, i just saved a boatload of money for this prospect and his processing time is cut in half! (and he didn’t even have to switch to GEICO for it!) What gives!!!???’
Did you ever take the time to understand that the pain your solution solves did not outweigh the accompanying pain of implementing it?
Whatever you sell, your solution causes pain in the organization you sell to. There are costs to the consequences of doing anything as well as doing nothing.
If you don't believe that, you've either taken too much sales training that forces you to barf features and benefits all over your prospects shoes and/or you have never purchased a B2B solution and you don’t know how to sell the way to buy.
Case in point:
You show your prospect that by implementing a new ERP integration system, their inventory, bookkeeping and order fulfillment processes can become better aligned and more importantly streamlined so that the time it takes for AR/AP department to process external invoices will be cut in half, but didn’t take into account the knowledge gap in figuring out the process it takes for internal tracking of reimbursements so it ends up taking the company’s long standing salespeople 40% longer to get reimbursed for their own expenses.
Your customer will look at the ERP integration that you showed them, highlighting only the value of that 50% reduction in AR/AP process without uncovering ALL the compelling reasons to buy in the first place and you didn’t ask enough of the right questions or even take the time to know how to implement your solution in the most painless manner.
And if your new integration causes well established revenue generators to LEAVE because they can't get expenses paid?… Say bupkis to the sale.
How do you know WHERE not if to look at how your solution causes pain?