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Selling the Customer What the Customer Needs – Not What You Want

I’d like to tell you a little story about Sam, an old acquaintance of mine. The first time I met Sam I had stopped in his little general store while passing through town to buy some soda for my long car ride back home. His was the only store in this very small rural town and he did a sizable amount of business. As I walked down one of the aisles to get to the refrigerated coolers in the back where they kept the soda, I couldn’t help but notice that the shelves were loaded with containers of salt for sale. There were salt containers from the front of the aisle to the back, from top to bottom, and on both sides of the aisle. I couldn’t believe it, an entire aisle dedicated to just salt.
I grabbed a couple sodas and went to check out.

As Sam stood there smiling I said to him, “Excuse me, but I noticed you have hundreds and hundreds of salts for sale.”

Sam simply said, “Yup. That’s right.”

So I said, “Well, you must be one heck of a salt salesman to sell that much salt.”

Sam slyly responded, “Nope. Actually, I’m a terrible salt salesman. But the guy who sold me all that salt, now HE was a great salt salesman.”

Dumbfounded, I paid for my soda, went to my car, and drove home.

Since I had so much time to think during my long drive, I couldn’t help but wonder about how Sam’s salt plight was so typical of customers who end up purchasing something they don’t really need. They purchase what the sales person wants them to, which is not always what the customer really wants or needs. Obviously, Sam did not need all that salt, but the salesman made a good commission check on that sale nonetheless.

Do you think that the sales person who sold Sam all that salt has a snowball’s chance in you-know-where of EVER selling ANYTHING to Sam again? Of course not! If he sold Sam only what he really needed at the time, he would have had a chance to develop a relationship for life and, over that life-time relationship, he would end up selling a lot more salt than he did in that one single sale.

This is one of the biggest lessons in sales – Understand what the customer needs and sell him the right solution for those needs. In doing so, you not only have done right by the customer, but the customer will trust you and that is how a relationship begins. Since customers are more knowledgeable, and even sophisticated, in today’s market, they are looking for sales people who are more problem-solvers and planners who can work with them as a partner rather than someone who is just trying to sell them something. Therefore, sales reps need to sell VALUE, not products or services. By developing your relationship-selling skills you’ll position yourself as a partner who sells value, which will make you stand out from the normal crowd of sales reps who are pushing products down their client’s throats.

Relationship-selling involves listening, instead of “telling”. Asking the right questions, shutting up, and carefully listening to the responses are the key ingredients for doing this right. Prospects will tell you almost anything if you show you care about them. The traditional “sales pitch” is now replaced with an interview, with the goal of solving your prospect’s problems. By considering the prospect’s bottom-line, instead of your own quota, you create a win-win situation. By solving their problems, you will get the sale and both of you will win.

In a non-relationship selling environment, the sale rep spends very little time in the early stages of the sales cycle. These stages include the initial contact phase where rapport needs to be built and the qualification phase where you establish whether there’s a good fit or not before wasting a lot of time. As a result, that same sales rep ends up spending way too much time presenting the solution, since they don’t know exactly what the right solution is. Therefore, the negotiating and closing phases take proportionately longer.

To sell value and develop a relationship-selling environment, you need to become a strategic partner who can bring value to the entire relationship, right from the start. Spending more time in the up-front phases of the sales process to build rapport and trust and to properly qualify your prospect to understand their needs, will make the next steps in the process go much easier and quicker.

You also need to be easy to do business with. Don’t make every step a painful experience. Each step should be viewed as something that is helping your prospect and driving them toward the conclusion (“their” conclusion) that they would be crazy not to purchase from you. If you are viewed as a valued problem-solver, then you will actually help them make their decisions, which is what many customers need. In other words, be part of their team.

Remember, it’s all about the customer, and not about what is best for you. So next time, try positioning yourself this way instead of focusing on your own needs. You’ll end up selling a lot more salt than you ever did before.

Good Luck & Good Selling!
Russ Lombardo is President of PEAK Sales Consulting, LLC and an experienced CRM and Sales consultant, trainer, writer, speaker and radio show host. Russ works with businesses to help improve their customer acquisition and retention for increased revenue and success. Russ is author of the books, “CyberSelling”, “CRM For The Common Man” and “Smart Marketing”. He can be reached at 702-655-5652 and emailed at russ@peaksalesconsulting.com.

Have you ever been on a sales call where the client was in total control? Of course you were. We all were. And it’s a real bear trying to change things when it happens. At some point, it becomes a runaway sales call and the client has manipulated and controlled everything. When this occurs, you lose all negotiating power, your ability to identify their problems, the chance to close, and anything else that will help you win their business.
I was in one of those memorable events once along with one of my resellers, in a previous life. Since we only sold through the dealer channel (i.e., value-added resellers), I was there representing the software vendor I worked for at the time and supporting our reseller. So I let the reseller run the meeting. Sounds innocent enough. Yea, Right! The client had about four or five people in the room and were very polite and cordial. And then they brought in Hans, their “technical guru”. (Seriously, that was his name – Hans) That’s when things changed for the worse.
Hans began to tell us about how challenging their business was as one of the leading carpet manufacturers in the industry. They sold to carpet distributors (who sold to stores such as Home Depot), major retail outlets (such as Home Depot), small carpet dealers, and other various distribution channels. As a result, their challenge was forecasting future business, since many of their clients changed or canceled their orders even after his company started manufacturing their orders. This caused enormous wastes when not managed properly. So they were looking for a product that would help them plan their business, forecast sales, manage their accounts, and basically cure world hunger (well, not exactly, but that’s what it sounded like at the time).
Every time our reseller tried to present how our product could potentially solve his problem, Hans, in his heavy Bavarian accent, would shoot it down, saying in a condescending tone, “You don’t understand our business. That won’t work because…” It seemed like he kept trying to set us up with a description of a problem, only to say that anything we proposed wouldn’t work. It was as if he already knew it wouldn’t work before he opened his mouth. And, in fact, that’s exactly what was happening. You see, he told us that every vendor he brought in had the same useless solutions and we were no different than them. He proceeded to challenge us to solve his problem since no one else could. He was in total control of the meeting. He made it clear that he was bringing in vendor after vendor, only to chew them up and spit them out. This painful episode prevailed for quite some time, that is until I spoke.
Since I let the reseller do all the talking so far, I noticed that he was desperately trying to solve this guy’s problem and sell him our product. I, on the other hand, saw something else going on — a big game that Hans was enjoying. I think he called it “Kill the vendor”. He was, in fact, trying to find a solution since his problem was genuine. But he was using his unique situation to challenge every vendor he could get his hands on. That is until I realized that his problem was a process problem, not a technology issue. In other words, his problem was systemic and had to be resolved by the way they did business with their clients. Once that was resolved, then they could use technology to track and manage their business. Unless they fixed the way they handled their own customers, technology wouldn’t do them much good.
I waited for just the right moment to initiate a well-placed cough to get their attention. I then leaned forward in my chair and said, “Excuse me Hans, but what makes you think that technology can solve your problem.” He started to answer, but only a few half words and stutters came out. He stared at me, then at the ceiling. After what seemed like 5 minutes of total silence, he leaned forward and said, “No one has ever asked me that before.” So I said, “So what’s the answer?” And he said, “I don’t know. But I think you are on to something. We’ve been looking for a solution in the wrong place.” We then had a very cordial and intellectual discussion about business processes and how to handle customers who screw up his business by canceling orders after he started manufacturing them. Hans’ demeanor totally changed. He started treating us with respect and assigned himself a project to figure out how they will change their processes to resolve their internal issues. Only after that was done would he revisit technology.
I have since moved on and don’t know what Hans and his company ultimately decided to do. Frankly, I don’t think our product could have helped him anyway, but it was a very interesting exercise in managing a sales call. Wouldn’t you agree? With some good listening skills and asking just the right questions, you can keep control of your sales meetings, qualify your prospects, and arrive at the right solutions, even if that means walking away because you don’t have the right solution for their problem.
Good Luck & Good Selling!
Russ Lombardo is President of PEAK Sales Consulting, LLC and an experienced CRM and Sales consultant, trainer, writer, speaker and radio show host. Russ works with businesses to help improve their customer acquisition and retention for increased revenue and success. Russ is author of the books, “CyberSelling”, “CRM For The Common Man” and “Smart Marketing”. He can be reached at 702-655-5652 and emailed at russ@peaksalesconsulting.com.