Categories: Sales Conversation
Even the most seasoned sales veterans can use a refresher on fundamentals every now and then.
Today, The Command Center is getting back to basics.
No matter what you’re selling, there are three critical sales skills every seller needs. Understanding them and then leveraging them consistently with customers separates the best from the rest.
If you want to see sales performance improvement, make sure your sales team has the tools necessary to capitalize on these three skills:
1. Uncover Customer Needs
The foundation to selling on value is the ability to discern what the customer really needs. This is crucial in the beginning of the sales cycle. It helps you:
1. Build a relationship with your potential buyer
2. Quantify the customer’s pain points and business objectives.
You can’t uncover customer needs without listening. People want to be heard, and they want to be understood. The only way to show that you understand your potential buyer’s business problems is to ask great discovery questions and listen to the answers.
Increase sales revenue through understanding the 3 critical elements that drive success.
2. Articulate Value and Differentiate
Successful sellers can articulate what they’re selling in a way that relates to solving customer problems and differentiates them from the competition. Anything else is just noise. Relying on features and functions often has the unintended effect of making your product sound expensive, and more than the customer needs.
3. Position and Negotiate on Value
If you want to negotiate on value, you need to have a compelling business case that weighs the cost of the solution against the cost of the problem. It’s much easier to preserve the margin when you’ve quantified the cost of the customer’s pain and business objectives early in the sales cycle. If you can’t articulate that cost of the customer's pain, your solution will be viewed as a commodity. When sellers uncover needs, articulate value and highlight their differentiators in relation to the customer's needs, the negotiation process becomes far less difficult.
When a sales force collectively does these three things consistently, sales performance improvement is the obvious result. Sellers exceed quota more frequently and are able to improve margins because they aren’t using price as a crutch to close a deal.
The key to driving this uniformity is to provide the tools necessary for sellers to repeatedly leverage these three critical skills in front of a buyer. At Force Management, we call that tool a Value Framework.
Learn how a you can help your sales team sell larger deals and improve their conversations with decision makers. Download our white paper below to get the 3 critical elements to drive their success.
