 Effective
Selling-Turn Prospects into Buying Partners
By
Ed Rigsbee, CSP
(999
Words)
Regardless
of whether they sell from an office or physically call on prospects, the
dream of every salesperson on this planet is to turn their prospects into
buying partners. Read on, and you too will learn the secrets. Your
prospects, like everyone else, are in some kind of pain. Your job is to
uncover their pain. Understand how your product or service will solve
their pain. Then translate the features and benefits of your offering in
such a way that your prospect will absolutely understand how accepting
your offer will relieve their pain.
The
following is my PARTNERS model for success in selling, follow the
simple acronym and you'll dramatically accelerate your selling career.
P
- Pain; uncover, understand, and translate it. This is the first and most
important aspect of selling. Without this knowledge, you might as well try
to walk a tightrope with a blindfold. To learn how you can move your
customer, you must have a strong understanding of their core issues, as
this is generally where their pain starts. Rather than having a personal
vision of pushing a product or service on others, have a vision of how
your product or service will solve the pain of your prospects and make
their life better.
A
- Access your prospects real situation. This can only be done with a
powerful, out of the chute, opening statement. One that will break their
preoccupation barrier, hook their attention and make it clear to your
prospect that you have something of value to offer. To access the real, or
hidden, need of your prospect, you must get them talking. And, you must
focus on active listening. If you are trying to convert someone away from
their current supplier, try asking the following two questions. Ask,
“What is it you find helpful about Company X?” Get them talking. When
they are relaxed and chatting about how wonderful their current supplier
is, make the transition. Ask, “Is there any area where Company X could
improve?” If they answer your second question, listen carefully—you
just struck gold!
R
– Relevance a must. Too often, I have observed sales people acting like
what I call a Features Jockey, where they spend so much time trying to
impress their prospect with their product knowledge that the prospect
doesn't have time to buy should they want to. Too much information can be
like trying to catch a little breeze in a wind tunnel—when it’s turned
on full blast. Do not make the mistake of blowing your prospect over with
a blast of information when they only need and want a little breeze. If
you did well in accessing the real situation, making it relevant should be
a breeze.
T
- Translate the features you believe to be relevant into profound
benefits. You cannot leave it to chance that your prospects will figure
out for themselves how your offer will make their lives better. They must
clearly understand how you can end their pain. Do the work—take the time
to be clear yourself on how your product or service helps your customers.
Ask satisfied customers themselves and then use their stories. Force your
sales manager, VP of sales or anyone else at your company to tell you more
about how you help people or organizations. The more you learn, the more
you can share.
N
- Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is the cutting edge science of sales
psychology. It is important to your success that you have a working
understanding of how NLP skills will help you to communicate with your
prospect in a style that will foster instant rapport. NLP is the study of
how the brain learns and through which strategies: auditory, visual and/or
kinesthetic. The key is to have the ability to recognize the preferred
learning strategy of your prospect and mirror that strategy in your
communication. If you do this, your prospect’s brain basically says,
“This person is like me. I like me. I like this person.” The result
will be a stunning subliminal connection.
E
- Emotional connection to your prospects is essential. Many of the ideas
listed above will help you to develop an emotional connection—they gotta
like ya! Understand buyers' acquisition motives and you’ll achieve this
emotional connection. Never forget that people buy based on emotion and
then use logic to justify their buying decision. Think back to one of your
own impulse purchases. For some reason, you were drawn to make the
purchase. That’s emotion. Then you cane up with some kind of
justification for yourself—and your spouse. That’s logic. Use this to
help your prospects remove their pain.
R
- Remove their objections. You can do this by using your NLP skills to
anchor your prospects positive feelings towards how your offering will
make their lives better. This is most effective when they finally reveal
their smoke screen objectives. Usually, an objection is simply an
indication that you attempted to close the sale before you demonstrated
the overwhelming value they will receive in doing business with you. You
just need to better demonstrate how your product or service will remove
the pain they are currently enduring. If you’ve already done all the
other good stuff I mentioned, this should be a very small part of the
selling process. If you get stuck here, go back to the two questions I
suggested you ask in the Access paragraph.
S
- Solve your prospects pain. Throughout the PARTNERS model, you are
simply moving closer to pain extraction. Do this by skillfully helping
them to understand just how easily they can have a better life by using
that which you sell. Generally, if you have done your selling job
correctly, you do not need tricky closes. The close is the natural
progression of the relationship building that you have achieved in helping
your prospect. Always remember that pain extraction, equals plentiful
sales.
Adopt
the PARTNERS model, and you’ll experience successful selling.
Your efforts will surely be rewarded.
To
access helpful additional information from Ed Rigsbee at no charge,
please visit www.rigsbee.com/downloadaccess.htm.
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Ed Rigsbee, CSP is the
author of three business relationship books: PartnerShift–How to
Profit from the Partnering Trend, Developing
Strategic Alliances and The Art of Partnering. Rigsbee has over 1,000 published business
relationship articles to his credit and is a regular keynote presenter at
corporate and trade association conferences across North America. He can
be reached at 800-839-1520 or EdRigsbee@aol.com.
For a treasure trove of information and ideas, visit his Partnering
University Web Site at www.rigsbee.com.
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