Professional Selling Skills Training in Malaysia | Customer Focused Selling
Maybe it’s changing technology. Maybe it’s the still-recovering economy, which in some sectors has yet to bounce back from the market slow down. Maybe it’s increased competition. Whatever the reason, it’s useless to deny that sales is changing—and in dramatic ways. Researchers note, for example, that companies are reporting longer sales cycle times, lower conversion rates, less reliable forecasts and compressed margins.
If the selling landscape is changing, so too is the buying landscape. Buying behavior is changing in numerous ways. Of course, today’s buyers have always been and will always be different from the customers of yesterday. From the production era to the sales era to the marketing era to the information era, selling and buying have progressed, evolving with changing times, changing needs, and changing technology. It’s no different today—except, perhaps, for the pace of change.
Back in the day, sales professionals held all the cards. If a customer needed something, the sales rep provided all the information, educated the customer, and drove the selling conversation. Oh, how the tables have turned.
Today, customers are in large part driving the selling conversation. In fact, many studies have shown, and thought leaders agree, that customers are much further along in the buying process before engaging the sales professional; some reports indicate that customers are as much as 60 percent of the way through their decision-making process by the time they connect with a sales rep.
The implications of these findings are no less than earth shaking. In addition to changing technology, a challenging economic climate, and increased global competition, sales professionals today now must deal with customers who are much further along in the decision-making process, who are much more educated, who are technologically savvy, and who are busier than ever. Customers often know what they want and have an idea of what it should cost as well as how long it should take to get it. They know what you and your competitors can offer, and they might even understand how the products and services you can provide vary from your competitors’ products and services.
As a result, it’s becoming harder and harder to differentiate yourself and your organization by what you sell. Products and features, options and benefits, prices and specials—despite all the various nuances that might make what you sell at least a little bit different from what your competitors are selling, the truth is it is much more difficult to differentiate on these points. Therefore, today’s sales professionals face an important challenge: how to differentiate themselves from all the other sales professionals out there who are selling similar products and services for similar prices. This is a critical point: in order to succeed, today’s top-performing sales professionals must find ways to differentiate themselves. They do this by providing value in how they sell, not just by what they sell. They differentiate themselves by how they build credibility with their customers, by how they nurture customer relationships, and by how they become trusted advisors. In doing so, they can better sell to today’s demanding buyers.
As the market keeps changing, we’ll discuss how these changes have affected the selling conversation, and we’ll look at how applying the steps in selling will help you accelerate the sales process and close more deals, all while remaining focused on the customer. We’ll look at planning, opening, discovering, presenting, and closing. And we’ll look at overcoming objections. But for now, let’s focus on what it takes to sell to today’s customer. Because the bottom line is that, despite all the changes, selling is still all about the customer.
That means that today’s sales professionals have to focus on the customer. Our research has shown that top performers do several key things to remain customer-focused: they use the right sales approach in dealing with customers at whatever stage they are in their decision-making process. They understand how customers perceive them. And, finally, they work to become trusted advisors. But before they can do any of that successfully, they first have to recognize (and accept) the fact that buyers have changed.
