selling
Recent posts on
Solution selling
How Does Your Team Gain a Client’s Commitment to Begin?
“My team just needs to do a better job closing the order. They are fine at building rapport and identifying client needs; their proposals link these needs to specific benefits, and they present these face to face. But, they often leave the presentation without any commitment to begin. [...]
What is the Best Sales Presentation?
An interesting question posed by one of our clients (a State Sales Manager). And there are a number of great ideas and tools available to improve format, approach and skills in making presentations. However, the key point is whether the presentation is trying to ‘convince’ a client or [...]
Why ‘Solutions’ and Not Quotes?
Many companies are using the term “solutions” and a State Sales Manager asked me recently what really is a ‘solution’? I asked: “What is your objective in contacting a client? Why do you want a client to buy from you?” If the answer to these questions is a “sale” then you are likely to position [...]
The Pleasure-Pain Principle
We regularly talk to our solution selling and business development clients about their skills in identifying the “pain” of their clients. There are three levels of need. The three levels of need are grounded in a useful polarity, called the pleasure-pain principle. The simplest definition of the pleasure-pain principle is that normal humans seek pleasure [...]
What is the Key Skill Today? Solutions Providers Gain Agreement on Client Needs
When a client asked me to help his business development team increase revenue from new and existing clients, I asked him what their training and processes were for identifying and gaining agreement on client needs before presenting solutions. Without that skill, all we could work on is their ‘sales pitch’ and that often does not [...]
Your Clients’ Latent Needs – What They Are Not Saying…
Recently a General Manager was working with us to improve the qualification and conversion skills of their business development team. Their focus was on new client development, and we proposed that there were different skills for different levels of need. We regularly separate three different levels of client need; by recognising the level of need [...]
