When selling technology (although this does apply to other industries as well,) potential customers can more or less be divided up into two categories; customers that are going to buy the lowest priced solution to their problem, and customers that are willing to pay a premium, but only if they feel they are receiving added value, as well as a quality product or service.
A lot of companies haven’t realised how big of an opportunity these potential customers present, nor have they concluded exactly how to create value for consumers outside their products and services. Research has recently shown that there are some specific sales skills that can be employed to create extra value in a customers mind.
The key to value creation is providing insight rather than information. Insight helps the customer plan for the future — not just solve today’s problems. To provide insight requires that companies tap into their own expertise.
Technology businesses that base their sales efforts on information — simply keeping their customers abreast of products and solutions — are truly no more than walking, talking brochures and they can get that information from your website. You must focus not on what you sell, but rather on how you sell.
There are two main ways in which salespeople can create value in the minds of potential customers, and they are as follows:
-Uncover the unrecognised problem. Leverage your expertise of the customer’s industry, company and market to help them see problems of which they were previously unaware. By helping them to discover a problem, through careful questioning, you can bring tremendous value and, of course, the solution to their problem.
-Offer the unanticipated solution. Offering an unanticipated solution means helping a customer chart a better solution or achieve a better outcome.
In order to provide a customer with an unanticipated solution to their problem, they must meet at least one of these prerequisites:
-The customer is aware of the need, and feels the pain
-The customer has some general idea of a solution to the problem
-They know what they want the outcome to be
If one of these situations exists you are in a prime position to help the customer identify a better alternative through an unanticipated solution.
Tags: advice, business, coaching, commerce, computers, ecommerce, economy, Finance, it, management, marketing, recession, sales, technology