Sale is a transaction of value and trust – not a one-night stand of price! That’s the nub of this tip by Mario Pretorius, who says price is secondary to “the tender ministrations of forming relationships” with clients. Rather than aiming to make a client happy, find how you can improve his world, says Mario.
A ‘quality’ sell is much more lucrative than a sale based on discount.
An old adage has it that by giving salespeople discretion to discount, they will do exactly that. So don’t. You have a quality product with many enhancements, supported extremely well (of course it also never breaks down but just in case it does); your sales guys have a proper intro and elevator speeches, understand the choices in the market and are primed to build life-long relationships.
You don’t aim to make a client happy; you aim to find how you can improve his world. Happy comes from a botched sale and a fat discount. Improvement comes from filling that gap that the customer didn’t know how you could fill so well.
Sale is a transaction of value. If no effort of effective execution of translating that value take place, either it’s the wrong customer at the wrong time or the wrong approach by your representative. It takes – and it is so expected – a performance to lay the foundation of trust. Only after trust comes the consideration for change.
The performance is key. By know you might have seen a number of good plays – and some were more satisfying than others; for the same entry fee.
Your sales guy is singing for his supper, and he better make sure the customer is in the mood (market) to hear the performance (sales pitch)
The quality sale is not a one-way street, a rattling off of
features, benefits, comparisons, PowerPoints or glossy brochures. It is an interaction of question, pointed answer, illumination, options, interaction and at last the conclusion: trust. Are we there? Now propose, not before. Only with confidence can the quality sale take place: confidence in your organization and your actor and your product as well as confidence exuded by that actor. It should be a harbinger of the future relationship – we’ll meet often in future and every time would be an experience that will reinforce why it was so clever and fruitful to choose us.
Price is secondary and any customer demanding this up front needs even more tender ministrations of forming relationships instead of one-night stands of price.
This tip is an extract from the manuscript of “The Unconventional CEO: Common sense outside of conventional Management thinking” (by Mario Pretorius).
