Focus on the problem you solve, not features and benefits of your product

My sales are starting to struggle.

Our customers aren’t buying as quickly as they used to.

I’m hearing no a lot more than usual.

Does this sound familiar to you?

When you go into your sales appointments, you feel confident in the product or service you’re offering. You know the features and benefits, the advantages. You know everything your product has to offer. You know that yes, your product will enhance the quality of life of the person in front of you right now. So why are so many folks saying no to you?  It might be this.

Shift the tone of your presentation

If your pitch is all focused on the features and benefits of your product, it’s too me driven.  “Look what my product can do.” “Look what my service can do.” “Look at this new feature.” If your sales pitch has that tone to it, you’re going to find more prospects are going to say no to your product. Instead, your pitch should be focused on the problem you solve for your prospect.

When you’re in front of a prospect and you’ve been selling a product long enough, the features and benefits should be second nature. It’s automatic that you know those things. So when you’re about to be faced with a new prospect, your internal monologue shouldn’t even be about those things. It should be focused on the problems your prospect needs solved. When you let that thought drive your conversations with prospects, you will have better outcomes. When you ask smart discovery questions to get your prospect to reveal the problems they have and then you talk about how you can solve them, you’re going to naturally be a better communicator and start hearing yes a lot more.

That’s just the start

But that’s just the start of the process. You have to ask yourself “Do they know the problem I am solving and do they know how expensive that problem is?” You have to get the prospect to acknowledge that they have this problem. Sometimes they may not even realize that they have a problem because they don’t realize there is a better way to do something. You need the prospect to verbally acknowledge “Yes that is a problem for me.”

After you get them to verbally acknowledge that they have a problem, you have to quantify the problem for them. Put a price tag on the problem. If the problem you are solving is costing the prospect $10,000 and the product you’re selling is $2,000 you just saved your prospect a lot of money. That’s great value. If the problem you are solving is costing your client $2000 and your product is $10,000, you provide zero value.

“Just so I’m clear of Mrs. Jones, what you just describe me right now is costing you about 40 hours a month and extra labor. And at the rate you pay, that’s about an extra $200 a month.

I mean, we’re we’re over 12-14 grand a year. Is that a fair assessment of the problem?

Yes that sounds right.

“My service offering is three grand for the year.”

Boom. You just provided huge value.

You have to have that conversation before you move forward. Once you do that, at that point you present your product and go in for the close. It won’t feel like a pushy sale when you can demonstrate how much value you bring.

If you need help in your sales process, shoot me a comment below. Send me a message on the DMs. Be sure to subscribe to the blog comment and I’ll see you next week.