So the other day I got invited out to a great evening with some new acquaintances, although the people in question were suppliers to us the evening was fantastic and entertaining, conversation enlightening and we picked up some great advise which I wanted to share. Of course the evening started talking shop and technical chit chat and lead into some leading questions I asked around “what does success mean to you”? and “what techniques have you used when selling a solution or product”?.
I am not going to name the people but what I thought was the best advise and something I will take on-board for the future was the following:
- Briefly explain your solution / product and then focus on turning the conversation around to the client’s challenges and issues – find out the pain points, what keeps them awake at night, why they worry about, this is handy for then leveraging your products benefits.
- Regardless of rank or job title if you have any negative people within the room or people that are supporters of competitors products then take the time to listen to them, find our why they think their products are better.
- Be honest – yes I know this could be hard for some people but if your product cannot provide the benefits to fix the clients issues or your solution is not as good as another – tell them that, but tell them in such a way that you then explain why or what you could do! On the other hand if your product / solution offers more functionality or even does the same thing in a different mannor then again tell the client, explain why it is the same or different – this will go along way.
Over the years I have met a lot of salesman and what I found with the above points was how these people not only focused on the stakeholder but also the staff (lower down) because they valued everyone, every challenge and wanted to ensure the whole audience left the presentation feeling that their product / solution could be fit for purpose and fix the issues.
For me a good lesson learnt was my focus would have always been the stakeholders, of course identifying the business challenges and issues but not really against focusing on negativity.