Selling What the is Customers Buying

Selling what the customer is buying is the simple approach. Getting the customer to buy what the sales guy is selling is much harder. Why on earth do those motivational sales books suggest that type of pitching is the ultimate skill? It’s arrant nonsense as should be evident to anybody who ever bought something.

Just about everything you’ll read about the science of sales is rubbish (apart from my blog, that is). That’s a bold statement isn’t it? Read on.

Everything I read assumes prospects are jerks. That’s why it’s rubbish. They may be jerks, but they’re jerks with brains and budgets. And we can’t get to the budgets unless we deal with the brains. In which case they aren’t jerks at all. They’re brains, and brains we need to work with. They’re customers

To do that we need to get into the customer agenda – what they’re buying (as opposed to what we’re selling). That agenda works in three dimensions:

The business strategy – as defined by the CEO

The business case – ROI justifying the spend

The personal interest – what makes the difference

Even in the smallest deals, and maybe with individuals as opposed to companies, the model still applies.

We described the way to handle this seemingly broken circle in Selling is About People but here’s the best summary I can come up with:

In order to make the sale we have to meet the objectives of the decision maker, and accommodate the constraints within which s/he can decide in our favour. This may make life complicated, but that’s to our advantage. The competition is likely to be thinking the sale is simple, and it usually won’t be.

Look for those three dimensions in every sale, and position your offer to satisfy each – you’ll win a lot more than you lose.