Do You Sell or Solve?
Daniel Disney
LinkedIn, Sales Navigator & Social Selling Author, Speaker & Trainer - LinkedIn Influencer (Over 1 Million Followers) - Award Winning Keynote & SKO Speaker - Founder & CEO of The Daily Sales
Sales people often believe they need to sell, that their role is to convince or persuade the customer to buy. This often leads to the use of aggressive sales tactics, applying pressure and pushing until the prospect either buys or doesn't!
There is plenty of sales training and sales processes that all focus around aggressive sales campaigns and strict templates for sales people to follow.
When selling people tend to focus around:
- Constantly calling prospects
- Pushing products or only promoting their products
- Pressuring to commit
- Manipulating the situation to get the sale
- Always trying to close
The reality is that most customers don't want to be sold too. When they phone a company or engage with a sales person they're not secretly thinking "I hope this sales person is really pushy and puts lots of pressure on me to buy"!
Customers are looking for support, for people to advise and guide them into the right buying decision. They don't want to be sold too, but to have their problems solved.
Todays customers know what they want and have already got 70% of the information that they need. They're then looking for that extra advice and guidance that industry professionals or experts can help with.
Customers want sales people too:
- Provide more detail on their products
- Listen to the customers problems
- Provide solutions based on industry experience
- Work collaboratively with the customer
- Allow the customer to buy on their own terms
The challenge is that sales people have targets. The other challenge is that if the customer is left alone there is a huge risk of the customer losing interest or going to a competitor.
There are some businesses and products where selling is the best tactic. Perhaps the decision is small and doesn't require a lot of thinking. In these situations selling can be the best path. Other businesses on the other hand perhaps need to flip their sales strategy and focus on solving customers problems first and then guiding the sale second.
Is it possible to solve your customers problems whilst still guiding the sale?
Do you prefer to sell or solve?
Should you focus on selling first and solving second?
I'd love to know your thoughts and answers to the above questions, please do write them in the comments box!
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Moderat oppositionsr?d i Sala kommun
8 年The kind of take on sales that all of a sudden makes it interesting. Helping customers fulfil their needs is a sure fire way of building relationships that lead to mutually beneficial business. I like it.
? MD Evoke Telecom, for your flexible working and cloud communication needs
8 年By providing the customer with the information that they need to make an informed decision you are helping them to buy the right solution. If by providing the right information yours has emerged as the solution of choice, it then rests with you to choose whether commercially you wish to accept their order.
To quote one customer: "An excellent account manager helping us explore Vodafone's portfolio of exciting products"
8 年Great article and I completely agree that if you solve the problem and they need to buy the solution then you should get the deal. However you can provide free consultation and then find the customer goes elsewhere for whatever reason. Therefore good sales practice means following up and staying in the mind of the customer and getting the decision.
Sales Consultant at Levitikal Group
8 年Inspiring article. Solve first...when you can solve a customers problem, automatically there is a sale..every person is willing to pay for a solution.
Senior IT Procurement
8 年I believe that it should be a combination of both! When you lead a business that solves a specific point for "prospects" or "customers" your company needs a financial return (sales) that allows to create additional values in terms of skills or innovation. It's more essential to get some financial return (sales) when you lead a startup which the viability is by definition more dépendant of sale results.