NAIL THE SALE
Do your home work to establish credibility and then listen…
Issue 2
Many print sales persons are under the assumption that selling digital solutions only requires getting in front of marketing executives to describe their new data driven print-related products. They expect that their prospect will know exactly what to do and run with from there. The fact is nothing could be farther from the truth. Selling solutions this way is akin to fishing with a hook without bait. Good fishermen know the pond, the type of fish in it, where they hide, when they eat, what bait they like and lastly, the best way to present it to them.
The most successful solution sales persons are like good fishermen. Here is a quick checklist to help you determine how prepared you are-and if you are being productive in presenting your company’s values:
- Do you begin meetings talking about your capabilities and then asking about your prospects business?
- Are you going to meetings without knowing the basic challenges of their industry, without doing research to see the types of products they sell and who they sell them to?
- Are you focusing on what you want to sell them, without contouring your capabilities around what they need?
If you said yes to any of these questions, you’re fishing without bait.
Successful sales persons that sell marketing-based applications (defined as programs that satisfy a fundamental marketing need), always are in control of the following two critical events in a sales meeting:
- Developing Creditability-By understanding the basic challenges of a prospect’s industry and some specifics about the company, they know the right questions to engage a marketer, product manager ( and yes sometimes even a purchaser) to open up and describe their current sales, marketing processes, and production issues.
- Opportunity-By listening to the challenges, and sales and marketing landscape, they can now identify and align the right applications that have direct value to the prospect.
Key takeaway
Anytime you try to define an opportunity with a prospect by describing your capabilities first, you have immediately limited your value. If your prospect cannot piece the solution together themselves-or worse- you defined your capabilities outside the parameters of what the customer needs or can realistically implement internally, you have still missed the target. Remember, do your homework, establish your creditability by asking the right questions and then contour an application that will help solve or improve the way your customer does business. While we cannot promise that following this process will be easy, it will increase your productivity and shorten your sales cycle.
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