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Do not be surprised by the fact that the low price and the high value of a product – or, more accurately, what each client considers to be a product’s price-to-value ratio – is at the end of the list when it comes to evaluating a purchase. This is especially true when the client is a professional or an entrepreneur.
You must be wondering what is at the top of the list. That’s where you’ll also find the answer to the questionof why a client prefers one supplier from another. Extended research has shown that customers prefer buying from salespeople-suppliers, who excel in the following:
1. Contribute new perspectives and ideas
If, every time they had a problem, clients could understand it and find an effective solution to it, they would do so themselves. The reason they come to you and your company is because they are “stuck” and they need your help. This is why you have to bring something new to the table, when you are in front of them.
2. Be willing to co-operate
Clients do NOT want to feel you are trying to sell them something, no matter how perfect your product might be. They want you to work with them so as to achieve a common goal, responding to their particular worries and their way of working. Ideally, your clients wish for you to have taken an active part in their success.
3. Convince them of your ability to bring results
No client will buy from you if you cannot convince them that you, your company and your product, can really work and deliver results. It is actually impossible to make the client believe it, if you do not first believe it yourself. Therefore, you have to “inject” them with the confidence and excitement you have about yourself, your product and your company.
4. Listen to your client. Give him all your attention.
When they describe themselves and their needs, clients can easily tell whether you are actually listening or just waiting for them to pause in order to start your sales pitch. In order to listen attentively, you have to suppress your own inner urge to speak and temporarily put your own goals aside. The conversation is about the client and the client’s needs, not about you and your needs.
5. Understand ALL of the client’s needs.
You’re creating an ideal image for the client, connecting the dots between his needs what your company has to offer. Is that enough? Unfortunately not. You also have to give some serious thought to the rest of the people in your client’s company, who will be affected if your client decides to work with you. Understand how their personal ambitions will be fulfilled if the sale is made (f.ex. advancing in the company ladder or gaining increased job security) and react accordingly, showing them that this deal will help them achieve their personal goals as well.
6. Help the customer avoid possible traps.
This is where many salespeople fall flat on their faces. Customers know very well that each of their decisions involves risk, but they also want you to help them minimize that risk. They want to know what could go wrong, as well as what has gone wrong in similar cases in the past. They also want to know what steps have been made in order to ensure that these problems will never occur again.
7. Create an alluring offer.
Do not underestimate the power of selling total solutions. Customers are expecting you to have the basic ability to compose a truly concrete offer. The only thing is thatthis skill is your “entrance fee” to the client and cannot win you the sale all by itself.
8. Clarify the buying process.
Customers despise salespeople who are vague in matters of pricing, discounts, availability, total buying cost, additional supplements and anything else that may come up later. They want you to be able to tell them, in simple terms, what this sale includes and how the buying process will be completed. Without surprises.Without last-minute changes.
9. Create a personal relationship with the client.
At the end of the line, every sale comes down to a relationship between two people, who like and trust each other. As a great sales guru has said “Everything else being the same, people will buy from someone that they like…and this is true even when everything else is not the same.”
10. Offer value that outshines the alternatives
It is here, finally, on the tenth and final place of this list, where we find the issue of pricing and how your price compares to that of the competition.
As long as you are not able to prove that buying from you is the bestbusiness choice, the client will always reserve the ability – and the motive – to buy from someone else. Don’t let them do it.
