Research Prior to the Sale - Ch 4 How You Make the Sale Series
January 29th, 2007 by digerati
This is Chapter 4 of [How You Make the Sale
It is important not to make a customer do our homework for us. We must ask the buyer to be specific about their expectations and needs, but we must also be clear about our expectations as a salesperson.
Hotbuttons are the attributes of a product that excite the customer and energize them about buying the product. Hot buttons are never generic. Find out what the customers hotbuttons are during the discovery portion of the sales interview.
It is also important to uncover and “landmines” during discovery as well. Landmines are previous bad experiences that may impact the sale. Some exaples of landmines:
* embarrassing facts (I don’t buy power tools because of an accident with a belt sander…)
* conflict between two parties on the buying side (two owners don’t agree)
* talking to the customer far above or below their level of understanding.
* addressing your comments to the half of a couple or partnership that you assume will make the decision and guessing wrong (aka, knowing who the decision maker is)
* assuming you know what has driven the customer to the marketplace
So where do you find out about this stuff?
Well, you sell the product, what excites you about it? Literally I mean. Don’t regurgitate some crap from the sales brochures. Tell the customer, in plain english, what excites you. It is impossible to sell something if you can’t get excited about it yourself.
There must be a reason they chose your product. Find out what their reasons are and log them into your memory so you can refer to them as you sell your product.
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How You Make the Sale is an excellent book for anyone interacting directly with customers or suppliers. That means you entrepreneurs!
See the How You Make the Sale Series page for all the chapters.
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