When working with sales teams, three excuses are often cited as obstacles to earning new business.
Ask yourself “why” you think it is an issue when you are tempted to mention one of these excuses and try a different approach
1. “If we don’t offer the lowest price, we don’t get the order.”
If you make no effort to learn about your customers’ business, and offer nothing novel or compelling to help them achieve success, then they will focus on getting the lowest price from you. You must change the focus of the discussion to describe how your offering can benefit their business.
Your customers don’t care about your product or service. They care only about the strategic value you produce for them. When you generate a quantifiable financial advantage that also strengthens their distinctiveness or competitive advantage, you produce strategic value. Generating value that helps achieve their goals enables them to see you as partner rather than peddler, expanding their focus beyond price alone.
2. “Our customers are focused on reducing today’s pain. They have no time to consider future benefits.”
It’s true that many customers have their head down, working hard to survive. That’s why they need their discussion with you to get their heads up, to consider where they’re headed while you’re helping solve today’s problem.
Every business has just two strategies – the mature, current strategy that pays the bills today from selling existing products or services, and a future growth strategy intended to replace the mature business and create the company’s future prosperity.
Selling to resolve the short term problem without connecting it to their future success costs you an opportunity to differentiate yourself. You lose the chance to leverage your expertise to help them succeed. Propose solutions that address their current pain, but also serve as an investment towards the customer’s purpose, vision or goals. Investment solutions generate longer term, sustainable value versus one-time solution expenditures that tend to focus on price. Delivering the future is the responsibility of your customers’ senior leaders – they pursue opportunities rather than pain. Focus on the future to separate from competitors and to foster connections with a customer’s senior managers.
3. “To stay competitive, our operations folks concentrate on producing good quality at the lowest cost. It’s not their job to learn about customers or make suggestions to our sales team.”
Earning the trust of a customer takes an organizational commitment. Sales make promises – the rest of the organization delivers on those obligations. Make it easier for your customers to choose you and to experience the value you produce for them. Assist in aligning your entire organization around your customers so you win when they win. Demonstrate that you are committed to helping them make money rather than taking their money. When your company’s people are aware of your promises and act to keep them, then you will be seen as an irreplaceable partner in your customer’s business.
Why is it important for your sales team to avoid these 3 excuses?
How can you help your organization realize their contributions to your and your customers’ success?
