Preface
In the modern commercial world selling your product and services is challenging at most of the times. I have seen many colleagues struggling to sell their services, in many cases, without success. I have watched many situations in which numerous sales people are trying to sell products to companies they don’t actually need. They don’t analyze needs, wants and criteria and they don’t take into account the company’s budget.
I am not a salesman. Actually, I am a systems engineer and solution architect. But since I am a free lancer I have to sell my services on my own. I am going to share a summary of a process that I studied in a few sales books and works pretty well for me.
Prepare
One thing that I am sure about is that preparing and meeting the customers’ needs, wants and criteria makes the selling process much easier. Usually, I am following the following preparation steps before I meet a potential customer:
- I gather information about the company: Products, services, organizational charts, stakeholders, offices, etc.
- I make sure that I know pretty well about my products and services.
- I make sure that I know the major competitors’ advantages, disadvantages and prices.
- I plan for Frequently Asked Questions that may arise
- I Plan for any presentation and visual aids I might need
- I mentally rehearsal the sales process and my presentations
It is not wise to go unprepared to a customer’s meeting. By gathering information about the client I can prepare my hooks (I will talk about it later), and potential opportunities that may fit to their organization.
By knowing my products and services I can respond to any questions and concerns that may arise and by knowing the competition I am prepared to deal with potential alternatives.
FAQ planning is very useful to inoculate against customer’s concerns smoothly.
First Impression, hooks and rapport
You have only one opportunity to make a first impression and that’s why it is so important. Most of the times is as simple as smiling, maintaining a good eye contact, offering a firm handshake and properly introducing yourself. Many people are messing that up!
The purpose of hooks is to get people’s attention and make them focus on you. Hooks are supposed to:
- Answer the question: Why should I listen to you?
- Make them to ask: What is it?
A hook example for a MS SharePoint solution I often use:
Mr. Doe, You know how difficult is to manage and organize your electronic documents, which makes complex to efficiently exchange corporate information across employees and customers? One of the many benefits of the solution we offer is that it will make the management of the electronic documents an easy task for your company, which means that information exchange will be adequate; leading to better corporate performance and customer satisfaction.
Rapport is one of the most important features or characteristics of unconscious human interaction. It is commonality of perspective, being in "sync", being on the same "wavelength" as the person with whom you are talking. Techniques of gaining rapport include the following:
- Matching your body language
- Using same phrases
- Speech pace
- Breathing rate
- Matching voice tone
- Maintaining eye contact
- Analyzing needs and criteria
Analyzing needs and criteria
It is a very important step in the selling process. Nobody cares about your products or services if they don’t need or want them. So, it is wise to understand what customer wants, needs and what it is important for him in your products or services. Needs analysis is as simple as asking questions and listening to the answers:
- What problems are you experience in information exchange currently in your organization?
- How long does it usually take to find out all the relative information about a project, a subject or a customer? Is this important to you?
- What else would be nice to be delivered in your solution?
Another important element to analyze is the customers’ criteria in selecting products or services. Some criteria examples are service availability, product stability, ease of use, helpdesk support, etc. Understanding customers’ criteria should be stated later in the sales presentation in order to increase the possibility of success.
Understanding customer’s budget
It won’t be in my advantage if a customer expects a solution of 5.000€ and I propose a solution of 25.000€, isn’t that right? I prefer to find out about the customer’s budget before presenting my solution. This saves a lot of time for me and the customer. Asking the question “Have you setup a budget for dealing with those problems?” can lead to three possible answers: No, yes XXX€, yes but I am not willing to share it.
If I get the answer yes XXX€, I have easily overcome my solution’s pricing pitfall. In the other two cases I have to take a different approach in order to find out something about their budget. I ask: “Ok that’s common. Let’s take a look at some round numbers. I have a 5,000€ solution that will solve some of your problems and a 25,000€ solution which will cover most of them. Which approach would you like to follow?”.
In most cases the customer will come up with a number, usually in the low budget range. This can be a strategic move to lower the price. In order to overcome such cases I can respond: “Hmm… We won’t go first class with that budget. Is it possible to trim some of the features?”. This will make them understand:
- that I know about my services and I am not willing to waste my time
- that a cheap solution will not solve all their major problems
Finally, I am trying to understand the decision making process. I need to know who and how are going to evaluate my proposal. I need to take into account the concerns of all the decision makers or decision influencers. Later, in my solution presentation, I should also deal with the concerns of those people in order to maximize my possibilities of success.
Summarizing
At this point I have analyzed customer’s needs, wants, criteria and budget. In order to go ahead with my proposal or sales presentation I am using a summarizing bridge:
Mr Doe, can I summarize what we have discussed so far? We talked about the problems of managing your company’s electronic documents and how this affects the exchange of information across your organization and your customers. You said that this is a major problem for your company since misunderstandings are very common due to outdated and invalid data exchange, is that right? We also discussed that a smart search feature across your electronic documents will save many hours of work and frustration. It is important for you and your company to implement a nice user interface, an easy to use search feature and to be possible to brand it with your corporate logo. We also discussed that the available budget to address those problems is around 15,000€ and that you prefer to pay 30% upon proposal acceptance and the rest 70% to span it on the delivery of each phase of the project, correct? Shall we close an appointment for the next week in order to discuss about the final proposal?
In the next part: Writing and presenting the proposal, closing the sale, following up.
