7 Steps to Selling Better — By Pierre Coombes
During this pandemic, you could be forgiven for thinking ‘selling’ was a bad word. If you are in sales, or more specifically in ‘business to business’ sales, then recently you’ll have had to add a little bit more sugar and spice to your pitch. Why? To navigate an easily offended market and charmingly manage objections from the ‘new toolbox’ of objections.
I fully understand that the pandemic has been tough, and in many cases, it has been very personal, but business has to survive! Sales is the bloodline of any business. To run a half-hearted sales strategy may well be catastrophic.
Taking into consideration that ‘stopping selling’ simply isn’t an option, how do we move forward into the new year when the general buying mindset is low? In my monthly column I’m going to look at 7 ways that you can ‘sell better’, each time covering a different idea, tool or strategy.
There is so much psychology at play when selling. Take the simplicity of buying a loaf of bread, as I did this morning. There are several ‘conscious’ and ‘subconscious’ thoughts that occur in the lead up to my edible acquisition.
Firstly, I am hungry. Simple. Despite my currently rocking ‘the dad bod look’, my internal wiring is telling me ‘eating to survive’ is a good idea.
Secondly, there is the emotional thought process which, in my case led to the purchase. This thought process, like most emotion-driven purchases, even encouraged me to increase my spend. I upsold to myself and coupled the bread with a delicious Danish butter and of course creamy tomato soup. Yes, you got it, it’s cold, its winter, and the thought of snuggling up on the sofa with a cup of soup and some crusty buttered bread sings happiness to me.
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In case you’re wondering where I’m going with this, people buy for different reasons, usually a multitude of reasons. Consumer products are perhaps an easier example, but with business-to-business products or services this is equally true. Whatever you are selling, there is generally a reason, a need and an emotional story behind a purchase. What problem does your offering solve, or if it doesn’t solve a problem, how does it make the customer feel?
We all too often dismiss the emotional narrative of a buying journey, opting for a ‘one fits all approach’. Not only does selling from an emotional standpoint better push the sale along, but it helps the customer to feel understood and thus the brand relationship they have with your product and with you is better. Good customer relationships lead to customer retention.
It’s all very well and good ‘getting to know your prospective client’ to make your sale more tailored, but you might think it’s too time-consuming. That’s where prospect emotional mapping comes in. You can create a very personal approach with a simple exercise: look at your prospects — who are they? What’s their role, why do they buy? Ask yourself as many questions as possible to understand your prospective client better.
It’s likely that there are a few different types of prospect, each of whom thinks from a different standpoint. For example, a company owner may buy something if it saves money or increases productivity, or for another reason that is directly impacting the business. They will have various emotional ties to the business, they may be trying to grow the business or perhaps times are tough, and they need to save money, or they need a solution to their problem. When the prospect is an employee rather than a business owner, you should map out their thinking in relation to their job, what do they buy, what impacts their decision.
Going into a tough recession as we may well be will heighten all of these emotions and problems. Your prospects will be needing different things so to solve their problems and move forward. Selling using emotional understanding will be even more important if you want to increase your sales. Using psychology in selling is the first of the seven steps to selling better!
Entrepreneur Pierre Coombes is considered a leading authority in Sales & Marketing. He recently featured in BBC One’s show ‘Call That Hard Work?’, where he showed what it’s like to spend a day as Tele sales person in his award-winning B2B lead generation agency Big Wolf Marketing.
Edited by Lola Sherwin.
Would you like to share your story or expertise with our readers?
Contact our editor-in-chief, Rafael dos Santos, by clicking here.
High Profile Magazine Editor-in-chief Rafael dos Santos
