I read this article by Alen Majer, where he explains why it's not sufficient that you have a product or service that is of value to your prospect, but you must make a special effort to guarantee that they see it and how they will benefit from it.
Enjoy,
Jorge Pinkus
Your Maximum Success Coach
P.S. Do you have your own domain? Get yours with unlimited email addresses, unlimited email lists, unlimited autoresponders, and much more, at http://www.123-sites.com
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If your prospect does not see the value in your product or service, and if the only difference between you and the competitors is in pricing, you didn't do a good job as a sales person. The main description of your position inside the company is to create the value, not just to show your price list.
Teaching and educating customers is no longer enough, giving them information about your products or services is no longer necessary. They can get them by themselves, without ever talking to you or your company, and know more about your product and positioning on the market then you.
If they know so much about you, how can you try to sell them the same product without knowing their business situation or their needs?
Remember that customers are sophisticated; they either have or believe they can get product information more reliably on their own. Information is readily available through many different sources, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Internet is full of different forums, blogs, and review or research websites where they can get information about your product easily.
Customers don't just want a specific product; most of the times they want to solve their pain point or business issues. A customer in today's competitive sales environment does not expect to educate the sales professional about their business. Therefore, you must already possess a solid understanding of the customer's industry, competitors, and business direction.
Developing such a comprehensive view of the customer is a task that requires extensive researching and education to get an overall picture of the customer's business industry. The modern sales person needs to focus on understanding the customer's business initiatives, strategic plans, IT environment, and key customer preferences.
If you are still seeing yourself as someone who is there to educate customers, you are living in the past. The time of product-centric sales is gone. Welcome to customer-centric approach in sales.
You need to move away from the focus on presenting your products. Instead a customer-centric approach shows that you recognize and understand your customers' needs, which is necessary if you want to survive in a 21st Century sales environment.
Your customers are tired of salespeople who come in and are unable to address real business needs, but talk about their company and the hottest feature, or unique one that nobody else has. There are many dimensions that you are selling, and price is only one of them.
How to win the deal and not even touch the topic of discounting of your product or service?
If you base your offer on your price only, there is a good chance that someone will have lower price than you, or you can end up in the bidding war that distracts from solutions. To avoid that, base your proposal in achieving more goals for your prospects, not just to save money, because every other salesperson will say exactly the same.
Customer wants to see the value not in your product; he wants to get the value from your solution to their business problem. They must perceive unique value from you. If they cannot differentiate you from the competition, there is no reason to buy from you.
Probably you can't differentiate much with your product, I am sure you have some unique features, but your competition has them too. Customers today can easily substitute your product with the one from your competition and still be satisfied.
So how can you differentiate?
That's where trigger events are coming to the game.
Trigger events can help you with recognizing needs and opening the door to have a meaningful conversation with customers who have events happening. Just to be different from the competition is not really important to your customers. What they would like to see is added value.
What creates customer value?
- Skilled sales force
- Sales process itself
- Understanding their business situation today and adapting to their particular wants and needs
If you recognize customers' needs and create the value for them, customers will move from initial meeting to a decision much easier. Communicating the value is a traditional view of selling, but in today's world you can't survive if you are not creating the value for the customer. And make customer realize that they are on the market.
Sales person needs to play a leading role to create the value for his customers. In each step of sales process sales person can create the value, but the most value can be created early in the process by helping customers to define their needs.
This is true especially in consultative sales where sales person can create the value recognizing customer needs with trigger events and helping them to define them better and deeper. Sales professional needs to create the specialized situation and put them on the market even they didn't felt like that before he entered the picture.
If you are just selling your product you are missing the point and you will die by price, as you lived by price. Customers are looking beyond the product; they are looking for the solution to their needs and your understanding of their business situation. Many times that should include help and advice too.
Different customers must be treated differently, what works for one customer may not work at all for another. Knowing about trigger events happening to your targeted prospect (and more different events is always better) you will have a very powerful tool to adjust your sales presentation to their needs, recovered with trigger events.
Concentrate on understanding your customers' business issues, and show them how to solve more than one goal with your product, create a value for them and you will go home with the contract in your pocket, whatever the price is.
Let me repeat it here once more - if you don't show the value you will definitely not win whatever your price is. Even if you have a lowest price on the market, it does not mean much to the prospect, because they don't see the difference between your product and ones from the competition. And many buyers are buying from someone who had crafted a compelling solution to their needs, then comes understanding of their needs, and after that the financial part of the deal.
Your goal as sales professional is to create value through how you're selling, not just through what you're selling. To be a real sales professional ready for 21st century customers, here is no question you need to change your approach, but when and how?
======================
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alen Majer, author of the book "How to sell to Americans"
has written a new book for everyone who is in sales and
struggling with the finding new customers: "Trigger Events
or how to find your next customer.
Alen consults businesses on different topics, from improving
sales processes, developing better relationship with the
customers, to improving internal sales forces skills. He
knows the secret of sales and he is sharing it, and after
15+ years in sales he still believes this is the most exiting,
best payable and most secure job position in the world!
http://www.salestriggerevents.com
http://www.alenmajer.com
Showing posts with label presentations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label presentations. Show all posts
Jan 21, 2008
Be a Better Presenter, by Kevin Eikenberry
I'd like to share this article, from Kevin Eikenberry, which I think it's long due... Almost every presentation I've witnessed (as a Coach, as audience member or as a client) it's guilty of at least two of the following errors. Here are eight uncommon approaches (they may be uncommon, but I wholeheartedly recommend them!) to presentations. Read them, and apply all eight of them:
======================
Rather than sharing the common wisdom with you – which must not be working very well if so many presentations are still so poor – I will share some uncommon advice. Think about it this way – if you try some uncommon advice, you might get uncommon results. Given the overall record of the common presentation, that will likely be very good!
1. More visuals, less words. Your PowerPoint presentation has too many words, on every slide (and there are probably way too many slides too – but that’s another article). Visual aids should be visual. Start replacing the words on your slides with images. And not just pie charts and line graphs, but pictures and images that help tell your story.
2. More emotion, less logic. It takes more than logic to move people. Give your audience the facts they need, but don’t overload them. Make sure you speak to the emotional part of people as well. Talk about why, and not just how.
3. More stories, less “facts”. We read books, watch TV and buy movie tickets because we love stories. When you create stories around your presentation or include relevant and passionate stories as a part of your presentation, you will be more successful.
4. More focus, less scatter. If you can’t put the key concepts and ideas of your talk on the back of an envelope or on one side of a 3x5 card, your message is too scattered. Hone in on your key message; know exactly what it is. If you don’t know it, how can you expect your audience to know (or remember) it?
5. More preparation, less “I’ll wing it”. Giving an effective presentation takes preparation and planning time. Too many people give poor presentations because they simply rely on their slides and muddle through. If you want to be a more powerful presenter, you must be prepared.
6. More belief, less bluster. Let your passion for your topic, your message and your recommendations show! If you believe in your message, let people know that through your words, actions, body language, energy and more.
7. More audience, less you. Hopefully you aren’t giving your presentation for your benefit, but for your audience’s. So, focus more on them. Worry less about how you look or sound and more about helping them understand your message. If your focus is all about you, stop reading – none of these points will help you. A presentation should always be about the audience.
8. More you, less façade. No, this isn’t in conflict with the last point; you will be a more effective presenter when you are real, genuine and sincere. Drop the posturing and be real. Your audience will appreciate it, and they will listen and trust you more.
You’ve just read eight pieces of uncommon advice. But reading them isn’t enough. You need to apply at least one of them to your next presentation. When you do, you will be more confident and will achieve more of the results you desire. You will have an audience that has heard and understood your words and takes action because of the presentation.
Potential Pointer: If we want to better at anything – including presentations – sometimes we need to do things differently than everyone else. Following the crowd will, at the very best, allow you to only be incrementally better. Taking a different approach can lead to breakthrough success.
=====================
About The Kevin Eikenberry Group
They help organizations, teams and individuals reach their potential through a variety of products and services including:
- Consulting / Coaching
- Speaking
- Training
- Products
to support the development of your potential.
To learn more click on the links above or call 888.LEARNER or 317.387.1424
========================
Have you already made a plan to apply some or all of the above ideas to your presentations? If you have, then great! If you haven't, stop right now and do it!
Your Maximum Success Coach,
Jorge Pinkus
P.S. Get your own domain name registered for one year, hosting for 12 months, unlimited email accounts, 999 autoresponders, 999 email lists, scripts and lot more for only $99/year. Go here:
http://www.123-sites.com
======================
Rather than sharing the common wisdom with you – which must not be working very well if so many presentations are still so poor – I will share some uncommon advice. Think about it this way – if you try some uncommon advice, you might get uncommon results. Given the overall record of the common presentation, that will likely be very good!
1. More visuals, less words. Your PowerPoint presentation has too many words, on every slide (and there are probably way too many slides too – but that’s another article). Visual aids should be visual. Start replacing the words on your slides with images. And not just pie charts and line graphs, but pictures and images that help tell your story.
2. More emotion, less logic. It takes more than logic to move people. Give your audience the facts they need, but don’t overload them. Make sure you speak to the emotional part of people as well. Talk about why, and not just how.
3. More stories, less “facts”. We read books, watch TV and buy movie tickets because we love stories. When you create stories around your presentation or include relevant and passionate stories as a part of your presentation, you will be more successful.
4. More focus, less scatter. If you can’t put the key concepts and ideas of your talk on the back of an envelope or on one side of a 3x5 card, your message is too scattered. Hone in on your key message; know exactly what it is. If you don’t know it, how can you expect your audience to know (or remember) it?
5. More preparation, less “I’ll wing it”. Giving an effective presentation takes preparation and planning time. Too many people give poor presentations because they simply rely on their slides and muddle through. If you want to be a more powerful presenter, you must be prepared.
6. More belief, less bluster. Let your passion for your topic, your message and your recommendations show! If you believe in your message, let people know that through your words, actions, body language, energy and more.
7. More audience, less you. Hopefully you aren’t giving your presentation for your benefit, but for your audience’s. So, focus more on them. Worry less about how you look or sound and more about helping them understand your message. If your focus is all about you, stop reading – none of these points will help you. A presentation should always be about the audience.
8. More you, less façade. No, this isn’t in conflict with the last point; you will be a more effective presenter when you are real, genuine and sincere. Drop the posturing and be real. Your audience will appreciate it, and they will listen and trust you more.
You’ve just read eight pieces of uncommon advice. But reading them isn’t enough. You need to apply at least one of them to your next presentation. When you do, you will be more confident and will achieve more of the results you desire. You will have an audience that has heard and understood your words and takes action because of the presentation.
Potential Pointer: If we want to better at anything – including presentations – sometimes we need to do things differently than everyone else. Following the crowd will, at the very best, allow you to only be incrementally better. Taking a different approach can lead to breakthrough success.
=====================
About The Kevin Eikenberry Group
They help organizations, teams and individuals reach their potential through a variety of products and services including:
- Consulting / Coaching
- Speaking
- Training
- Products
to support the development of your potential.
To learn more click on the links above or call 888.LEARNER or 317.387.1424
========================
Have you already made a plan to apply some or all of the above ideas to your presentations? If you have, then great! If you haven't, stop right now and do it!
Your Maximum Success Coach,
Jorge Pinkus
P.S. Get your own domain name registered for one year, hosting for 12 months, unlimited email accounts, 999 autoresponders, 999 email lists, scripts and lot more for only $99/year. Go here:
http://www.123-sites.com
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