Archive for Category: Features vs Benefits

Negotiating across the 7Ps helps buyer see value

Sellers who focus negotiating to price only, limit themselves and lose the opportunity to show value-especially with new business. “Give us a discount. We are giving you 500 salespeople to train.” Contrary to popular belief, this is not an open and shut case of obvious discount from bulk business. Instead, it’s an opportunity to negotiate.

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Adjust your presentation across the hierarchy for a faster close

If the sale is to succeed, the presentation must be tweaked appropriately for content, style and duration. So, adjust your presentation across the hierarchy. To begin with, picture this. You tell your finance or managing director that, “Reconciliations are not being done correctly in the accounts department.” Likely, he irritatingly wonders, worse, for you, angrily

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Accelerate the sale: personalize it to the buyer’s real reason for buying

You are more inclined to listen to the buyer who points out the benefits of having the shirt on; like, “It accentuates your chiseled torso or emphasizes your hip movement.” Stating the benefits of your product isn’t enough to accelerate the sale; to do so, you need to customize them to the respective buyer. The

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Keep open to and address your buyers’ real reasons for buying

So profound is this that a client of mine who sells pesticides tells me that one of their products is more expensive and bulkier than the competitor’s and yet farmers prefer it “Mimi nilivotia Sonko, kwa vile Kidero ametusotesha sana. Na hope Sonko atatulipa mshahara on time kwa vile Kidero alikuwa anakaa sana bila kutulipa.”

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Be practical about the buyer’s problem and accelerate the sale

Repeating the tag line of your (outsourcing company) company verbatim, ‘Do what you like, and let us handle the rest’ only serves to force the buyer to think how it applies to him and lengthens the sale that much more. To accelerate the sale, be practical about how your product solves the buyer’s problem. Regular

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A Demonstration Makes The Presentation Easier But You Must Close The Sale

Demonstration makes presentation easier for the seller. Equally, the more the buyer’s senses the demonstration interacts with, the higher the chances of making the sale, as the connection created is magnetic. (That’s why fries are so addictive.) A demonstration is not the sale. It’s merely a presentation. An effective one I’ll admit, but a presentation

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Scientific Sellers must Adopt Artistic Skills for Successful Closes

1+1=2 is scientific. When selling, the answer depends on how the question is perceived. As such it could be an is equal to sign, or the number eleven, or two ones, or… Selling is not a science. This is what sellers that are scientists (app developers, crop consultants, engineers, IT experts, even accountants) quickly and

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Beat the competition – Sell to buyer’s real reason for buying

On the surface these look like genuine reasons to buy; but they are no different than being invited to buy a shirt because “it will cover your nakedness”. Why do buyers really buy your product or service? Chew on that; we’ll come back to it. In my classes, whenever I ask the question, “Why

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For a successful sale tell what the product can do, not what it is

In other words, the seller tweaked what the product can do for buyers, commensurate to who the buyer was. Don’t tell them what you made. Tell them what it can do. For them. I recently read this somewhere and its explicitness inspires today’s post as it captures the essence of successful selling. Entrepreneurs should especially

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Profit raking salespeople take time and money to build

The unspoken sentiment is that this is no longer a ‘business’ problem but a Sales problem. That profit raking salespeople come automatically. What the business soon realizes is that a sales team is a different kettle of fish “Sara, have Sales do that thing where profits go up.” So the CEO, in a cartoon strip,

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