Leveraging Your Strengths

Продажи
	Sales.com
		Addressi...

by Diane Sanchez, Stephen E. Heiman, and Tad Tuleja

Have you heard that old, tongue-in-cheek handyman’s saying? It’s the one that says all you need to fix a big problem is a bigger hammer. Surprisingly, most of us in sales have actually used that approach. When we’re turned away from a sale, we usually keep hammering at the buyer in the hopes that we’ll finally win him over. Without much success.

See if these scenarios sound familiar:

1) You’ve left four phones messages for the potential buyer, and she’s never responded. What do you do? Leave her a fifth message?

2) You’ve given two top-notch presentations to a potential buyer, but he’s still not convinced

your product does anything more than what he’s currently using. Do you give him a third presentation?

3) A potential buyer says that your service package is more expensive than the competition’s? Do you offer him a discount?

There’s nothing wrong with optimism. But in and of itself, it won’t get the job done. You’re simply using a bigger hammer to try and solve a problem. Let’s face it, some obstacles to buying are so firmly impacted that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t budge them – not when they go flailing at the problem head-on, wielding massive sledge hammers. What you need is a lever.

Extremely powerful, yet easy to use, a lever is one of man’s great inventions. And it’s one of selling’s most effective tools. To get rid of deeply impacted problems, lever them out with your company’s strengths.

Look at the examples we’ve just mentioned, this time, from the “strength” perspective. If the first buyer has failed to respond to four phone messages, the chances are good that you haven’t established enough personal credibility with her to get your calls returned. That’s your problem – lack of personal credibility – and it’s working from weakness to think that perseverance will overcome it. In this situation, we recommend looking for someone else – a senior executive in your company, a “coach” – who does have credibility with this particular buyer, and getting that person either to set up the meeting you want with the buyer or to cover her directly. That would be using a strength (your colleague’s credibility) to offset the influence of an “immovable” buyer.

In the second example, if your reluctant buyer is unconvinced that you’re offering him anything more than what he already has, your need to make a sale will not suddenly convert him into an eager buyer. What he’s feeling is personal, and you can’t dislodge it by dismissing its validity. That strategy works from weakness. Yet there’s almost always somebody within a company that wants something better or someone who believes their current product or service isn’t working as desired. If someone else who can influence the buy fits that picture, that’s a strength. One strategy that leverages from strength would be to get such an influence to demonstrate to the original buyer that his company as a whole will profit from your solution.

In the third example, your buyer is asking you to play the picturing game – to accept a position at the commodity level of the buy-sell hierarchy. By agreeing to discount your service, you’ve accepted that invitation, which – even though it may get you the business – is a strategy built on weakness. Presumably your company developed its pricing for good reasons, and a strategy built on strength would demonstrate those reasons to this buyer. Superior service, greater reliability, a history of top-notch consulting advice – whatever your particular strengths may be, they are what should be emphasized – leveraged – in eliminating the problem of price competition.

Stop pounding away at resistant buyers and pesky obstacles. And start leveraging them with your company’s strengths. You and your customers will benefit from this more effective and efficient approach.