Did you ever notice that most of the time you are making sales calls, your customers are not in a hurry to switch vendors? They are basically satisfied and are not in a rush to do anything new. Many sales people find this to be a problem, yet these sales calls tend to provide the most profitable opportunities.
Marc Miller, in his book "Selling is Dead", does a good job in explaining this. While his thesis is geared towards key account selling, I would suggest the same holds true for all sales relationships including customers who purchase items over a period of time.
Why are satisfied customers your best opportunities? To begin with, this is where you can get into conversations about the results they are after and the gaps that prevent them from getting there. By being the catalyst to uncovering new possibilities, you now gain the high ground as the trusted advisor who is bringing new ideas and solutions to the table.
When the customer buys into your proposal with a conceptual agreement, they now more than likely will skip the shopping phase and move into a conversation with you on implementation. At this point, you have the high ground and little or no competition. If for some reason the customer slips back into the shopping mode, then at least the specs of the customer purchase are designed around your solutions, which again puts you in the driver's seat.
Marc explains the shopping phase as the ground where most of the dead deals reside. Everyone is competing over the same thing and in most cases, the differentiating issue revolves around price. In Bill Brooks book, "You Are Working Too Hard to Make the
According to my two colleagues, you have a choice. Compete with everyone else and lose quite a few deals and gain little profit, or find opportunities where you can truly differentiate yourself with new ideas and solutions for problems the customer has not even thought about. True, most of us have to create a delicate balance here. However, if your sales calls do not include a good mix of customers who are currently satisfied yet do have challenges that require attention, then you are always going to be in a cat fight with price being a major issue most of the time.
Karr Associates, Inc. celebrates its 18th year in business this coming November. All of our client's results have focused around changing their conversations and creating a value proposition that is considered second to none. These results include a 10 year $200 million negotiated supply agreement, as well hundreds of other outcomes sales people have achieved by simply changing their mindset and conversation. Even though many of these customers were ready to make a buying decision, my clients successfully changed the way they thought about the decision. They broke through their "satisfaction" mindsets and identified new opportunities and reasons for doing things differently.
A mindset shift for you to consider this week: When a customer says no thank you, we have everything we need, your mindset should be, great, but that is not what I am here about. I am here to discuss your goals and how we can fill any gaps you may have in reaching those goals. Or, if the customer says this is the way we always buy these products, your mindset should be, great, but that is not what I am here about. I am here to discuss strategies that are powerful enough to support your growth goals.
Remember, customers don't perceive it as valuable talking to us about what they have already achieved. The value comes in discussing what they are trying to achieve now and in the future.
Satisfied Customers!!! Bring them on! There's gold in those opportunities!!! Just ask the right questions!
