Who has not stood in line at a petrol station and thought, “You know what, I need a chocolate bar right now!” The bars are put next to the tills for exactly that reason. We do not really need the bar but we see it there and it makes us think that we need it.
How many people in business do you think make impulse buys? I am going to suggest that it is not very many. The decision to buy a product is generally influenced by a number of people in different roles and the buying process is often controlled by a procurement department. As a result, impulse buys in a business are very infrequent. A business will have to need the product before they will buy it. A sales person must find those needs and position their product as the solution to them.
For the customer, the process starts from having a problem or an issue, something that needs to be solved. Surveys suggest that half of all potential customers for your product will be quite happy with their current situation, they do not have a need. That is a reasonable place to be. On a personal level, we need to buy food on a regular basis but we don’t need to buy an oven to cook it in quite so regularly. Our need for food is driven by our need for energy; our need for a new oven will probably come from the old one breaking down.
Likewise, your customer will not come to you until they perceive that they have a need. It could be as simple as they have a new employee so need to buy them a new laptop. However, it could be much more complex like being unable to track orders through their purchasing system. The new laptop is generally easy to solve and can be done quite quickly. Fixing the problems with a purchasing system requires much more information before it can be solved.
However, a customer may not always realise that they need a new product. Their business in performing, they are managing to deliver to their customers, all seems fine. In these instances, the sales person first needs to persuade the customer to change before they can persuade them to buy their product. Until the customer sees the need to change, they are not going to buy a solution as they don’t think that they have a problem.
Asking questions is at the root of finding out about needs. A sales person must ask their customer all about what they are doing, what they are trying to achieve and what is stopping them from achieving it. It is important to fully understand all of their needs, even those that you cannot help with or seem small and irrelevant. If they are affecting your customer, then they are affecting your ability to help them and therefore make a sale.
The best sales people ask the best questions and equally, listen to what the customer is saying. They don’t just talk through their mouth! Everything about how they speak, their body language and demeanour impact their message. It is important to listen to everything that they are saying and understand the message. Ask more questions to ensure that you understand everything and go back if you realise that you do not.
Try to understand all of their before you even mention what your product does. Until you can be sure that you can help, there is no point talking about your product. If you talk about your product too soon, you risk wasting your customer’s time. Alternatively, you might distract them from what you really want to know and they will start to raise objections to your product simply because they do not understand why they need it.
Needs first, product second and you will be more successful more of the time.