You’re a sales professional, so if I tell you to stop selling your product or service, you’re probably going to question my credibility.
But stay with me for a minute. I believe the most important tip I can give you is that, to increase sales output, you should stop selling your product or service.
The prospect doesn’t care about your product
Your prospect doesn’t care about your product. They care about their own business. To increase your sales output, sell a solution to a problem facing their business. They will only care about your product when you offer a solution to a problem they may or may not realize they have.
You present your product only after you’ve uncovered the problem they have and the solution you have for it. You have to build value yes, but that doesn’t mean you sit there and feature dump.
Get them to acknowledge the problem
Instead, building value is a strategic process. You start by building the problem and getting the prospect to acknowledge that they have the problem. If they don’t know about their own problem, your product is useless.
Your discovery questions should bring their problem to light. As you go through this process, you ask questions about how that problem is impacting their day-to-day business, their larger goals, their ability to earn money.
When you do this at the beginning of the conversation, you can start to build the back end of the conversation. Once they acknowledge they have the problem, you tell them about the solution and about the desired outcome that takes place when they say yes to you.
For example, let’s look at personal training. When a person signs up for personal training, they don’t sign up because they want to do 100 burpees. They don’t sign up because they want to get their butt kicked at the gym every week. They get a personal trainer because they have a problem that personal training can solve–it’s probably that they want to lose weight and get fit.
Sell the outcome, not the journey
That model applies to every type of sale. Customers buy solutions. They buy the desired outcome (the weight loss and the fit body). They don’t buy the journey (the burpees and the sweaty gym sessions).
Once you have the conversation about the problem, the solution, and the desired outcome, it is only then that you can start talking about the bells and whistles. Then you can talk about the features, benefits and advantages of working with you.
Here’s the simple process:
- Identify the problem
- Get the prospect to acknowledge that they have the problem
- Bring to light the impact of the problem
- Sell them the solution to the problem
- Sell them desired outcome they will get from the solution
- Sell the product/service
https://youtu.be/xf08OwMLdug
