How should you sell?
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What are you like when you sell to new clients?I have spent a lot of time over the past 6 months researching products, trying them out, giving them a test drive, speaking to different suppliers & vendors, to find the best solution for my clients.
In some cases I’ve had a great experience. Others my thought has been “meh” average. Some have just been bad.
Now different people have different preferences but try these things out when you are selling to potential customers. Have a think about the below.
What information do they want from you?
Listen, ask questions, find out. Don’t speak at them as to the virtues and benefits of the product. Be an active listener and respond to what they say.
Are they asking about price? Value? Features? How to use it Don’t send them a 5 page whitepaper just because “that’s what we do with everyone” find out what detail the customer actually is after. If they want detail, help them get it, if they want honest answers to questions, be ready to answer them.
Once you have found out what the information is, find out their preference to receive them, would they like a screen-share? Phone call? Webinar? PDF with 20 pages of detail for them to chew over, or a simple 1 page summary. Different people want different things.
Sell a solution not a product.
The customer is reaching out to you because they have a problem or need, your job is not to sell them a need they don’t have, it is to help them learn if your product, will address that need. If the client receives extra features or benefits, that is a good thing but don’t lose sight of their original need.
As tempting as it can be to close a sale, keep in mind what their goals are. Align your product with those goals don’t try to change their goals to suit your product.
Sometimes, you will not make a sale but if that potential client has a good experience with you, they could easily recommend you to their network of contacts.
Avoid Templates, Be personable.
Recently on Spiceworks.com – A thread was started by a member on how a particular vendor was sending multiple emails.
Unfortunately for the vendor, they had chosen to send multiple emails, all with identical content, from different members of their sales team, so the user in question felt like they were a cog in a machine Even worse was when other users posted screen-shots of identical emails they had received. The sales process was anything but tailored.
Your first impression will last a long time in someone’s mind, so be careful that how you choose to sell does not damage that first impression.
Respond to clients on their channel
Some clients, will not want to speak to you on the phone. They don’t have the time to spend on a “maybe I need this” – conversely if they reach out to you on a social media platform, don’t direct them to a contact form on your website, assist them on the channel they choose to talk to you on. Make sure you are not missing out on any opportunity to talk with clients.
If you fail to reply or force them to switch channels, you run the risk of switching them off from wanting to talk to you.
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@Breffni-Potter How important are data sheets and other forms of collateral to your selling process? If you could have one piece of content to utilize during the selling process, what would that look like?
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@GlennBarley said:
@Breffni-Potter How important are data sheets and other forms of collateral to your selling process? If you could have one piece of content to utilize during the selling process, what would that look like?
I would want different things at different stages of the process, do I want the costs? do I want features? do I want to learn about security? What about performance/testimonials? Same again for my clients, different people will want different things at a different time.
One person might want to read the data-sheets, attend the webinars for hours before making a decision, another person will spend 15 minutes and that is all you have with them to win them over.
Webroot:
http://www.webroot.com/gb/en/business/resources/I've not read any of this, nor would I be using it when evaluating, how I got into Webroot was.
- Other people outside of Webroot said "We love them, they are great"
- Someone in the sales team at Webroot spoke to me like a human, was not pushy, just said "we're here, we do this"
- I could try the product without gated marketing or speaking to sales, they just wanted an email address and I had a product trial
- The price was reasonable.
Unitrends, I might have watched this video but they put a gate in the way:
http://www.unitrends.com/company/events/on-demand-demos?utm_medium=website&utm_source=homepagea&utm_content=allNow this is handy, I have a ballpark of the pricing instantly, with a feature comparison and it's not 60 lines worth of feature differences.
http://www.unitrends.com/products/enterprise-backup-software/unitrends-enterprise-backup#tab_4Does that make sense?
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@Breffni-Potter Right. It sounds like successful sales people do the most to not seem like sales people. Instead, try to connect on a personal level and actually HEAR what the potential client has to say.
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Actually I changed my mind.
Your website better have all the information, all the data sheets, so I can hop around it and look at the detail.
If I need to talk to sales to learn what your product does, your website is not doing what it needs to do.
http://www.continuum.net/solutions/rmm-software/remote-monitoring-and-management
In this case, I get what the product does, I can see the devices it supports, I have everything there except for 2 things.
Price - Not every service can or should list price, that is fine.
Outside reviews. - "Read about Geeson's success with our RMM Platform and NOC Services!" - Points onto a continuum site. When I google Continuum, what comes up about the company outside of your site? -
@GlennBarley said:
@Breffni-Potter Right. It sounds like successful sales people do the most to not seem like sales people. Instead, try to connect on a personal level and actually HEAR what the potential client has to say.
If you want people to talk about the product, make friends.
Interestingly, 3 of the biggest AV providers at the moment, their main sales people on Spiceworks are all friends with each other. They are not trying to close every deal, they are there to build a relationship, they are not preaching at us, they are having a conversation.
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@Breffni-Potter So if you scroll down you'll see a sample testimonial from Greystone Technology Group. We have our full customer testimonials on a different page. You think it would be more beneficial to link directly to those full testimonials? Or even include the full testimonial on the product page?
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@Breffni-Potter Actually, when you click on the sample it takes you to the full testimonial.
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@GlennBarley said:
@Breffni-Potter Actually, when you click on the sample it takes you to the full testimonial.
http://www.continuum.net/resources/msp-resource-center/success-story/geeson-scales-to-new-heights
Nope. Broken 404 link.
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@Breffni-Potter Sorry, where are you pulling that link from?
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@GlennBarley said:
@Breffni-Potter Sorry, where are you pulling that link from?
Click on: http://www.continuum.net/solutions/rmm-software/remote-monitoring-and-management
Scroll down to: "Read about Geeson's success with our RMM Platform and NOC Services!"
Or click on the grey picture with a part testimonial.
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@Breffni-Potter Thanks for pointing this out. Working on getting that fixed now.
Are you located in the UK? We have smart content for different regions which is probably why I didn't catch it.
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Yep, UK based.
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@GlennBarley said:
Are you located in the UK? We have smart content for different.....
I swear that I saw "smart continent" when I first glanced at this. -
@Breffni-Potter Should be up and running soon. Sorry about that and thanks for the catch.
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@Breffni-Potter Thanks. We're going to do a full audit of the UK smart content pages. Very much appreciated.
