This is the
quandary of the traditional sales person---they sell, but we all know
people don't like to be sold! What we forget about this concept is that
while people don't like to be sold, they really do like buying!
I'll
say it again--people like to buy. People need to buy to achieve their
goals. A problem is that people don't necessarily know how to buy!
Solving this problem for customers is the real opportunity for sales
professionals, it's the opportunity for sales to add value to the
customer's buying process.
The
role of the sales professional is to facilitate the customer's buying
process. We can do this in many ways. Traditionally, a critical role of
the sales person is to educate and inform the customer. Today's
customers are much better informed---thanks to the Internet and all the
resources available, but there is still a "last mile" challenge with
many things so the role of educating and informing the customer is a
critical function of the sales professional, the bar is just higher.
For
the B2B sales professional there is a tremendous opportunity to create
value for the customer by helping to facilitate their buying process.
Think about it for a moment. As an example, how many times in a CIO's
or CFO's career do they purchase and implement an ERP or Financial
System? For most complex systems solutions, the buyers may only
purchase a handful of times -- and each buying decision is separated
(hopefully) by many years.
On
the other hand, the sales person goes through this cycle many times a
year. In the course of the year, sales people go through this process
more times than most people go through in a lifetime, we are experts in
the process. We know what organizations should be looking for in a
solution, we know the errors organizations can make in selecting and
implementing a solution. While our view is naturally biased, we can
create great value in facilitating the customer's buying process.
How
do we facilitate the customer's buying process? It's a few simple
things, but that can have great meaning to the customer---again much is
focused on educating and informing. Things like: What are the questions
they should be asking---of you and of your competitors? What should
their expectations of a solution be? Are they realistic, unrealistic?
What are the pitfalls involved in selecting a solution? What are the
things they should be considering, but not thinking about? How can they
sell their management on the solution and providing budgets for it? The
list can go on.
It's
pretty easy once you start thinking about it. Just get out of your
"sales" role and put yourself in the customer's shoes. If you were
buying a solution, how would you go about it? What would you do? Share
this with your customers and help guide them through the process as
they execute it.
Another
thing every sales professional can do is to make the process "easy" for
the customer. Often, I meet with sales teams with convoluted, complex
strategies to "sell" to the customer. We over think and over complicate
the process--primarily because we are thinking about our competitors
and not about our customers. If we just focus on making our solutions
easy to buy, we will help our customers tremendously.
The
role of the sales professional is to facilitate the customer's buying
process. Customers love to buy, we just have to make it easy and
productive for them to do this!
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