What is it that every business wants? Sales, of course. Unfortunately, a sale is often never made because all the business is interested in is making a sale!
What’s Important?
While making sales is an essential ingredient for the success of any business, winning over the customer must be a higher priority. Before a sale can be made, the customer must be won over by the business and feel secure in making a purchase.
The Customer
Regardless of the industry, customers want benefits and solutions to their problems before purchasing. This is the fundamental interaction between customers and businesses. Another way to look at this relationship can be summed up in one word – value. Whether it is a benefit that a customer is seeking or a solution to some problem, customers seek value for the money they will spend, whether it is a business purchasing from another business or an individual consumer purchasing from a business. Purchasers want value!
The Focus
Often, the beginning process of a sales transaction starts with an incorrect focus. The focus is either “I” or “we.” “I can do this, or we can do this.” Customers do not care what a salesperson can do or what a salesperson knows or wants. Likewise, they are not interested in how a product is made or what processes a company goes through to provide some service.
When “I” and “we” are used, the genuine focus of a sale is lost. In reality, purchasers don’t care about a salesperson or a company. They care about themselves and what the company can do for them. Purchasers want to know how a purchase will benefit them…not how the sale will help the company.
Incentive to Purchase
Purchasers need an incentive to purchase. The most significant motivation is for a business to provide value to its customers. What is it that customers want? What are their needs? What value are they looking for, and how can a company provide this value?
Delivering value is what closes a sale. Whether it’s a complex negotiation or a simple over-the-counter sale, the focus remains the same. Whatever a customer is purchasing, they want to buy value.
Delivering Value
The path forward for any business is understanding the power of value and how to deliver that value efficiently to customers. When a business understands the power of providing value, it receives value through sales. But businesses, through their employees, need to know where the focus should be. “I” and “we” must be replaced with “you,” meaning the customer.
Power of Value
Sales become much easier when employees understand what is most important to customers. Although everyone likes to talk about themselves and their businesses, the challenge is to focus on value, the customer, and how the business can provide what the customer wants – value in one form or another. Keep the focus on value, understand the power of value, and be persistent in discussing value with customers.
