Close more sales. It’s not the features and benefits, it’s the way you sell it

“Having a sales process that will consistently close more sales is the single biggest competitive advantage that you can have” – Owen Wood

As you know, selling isn’t just about meeting your client’s material needs and the features & benefits of a product. Customers have needs that need to be met from the sales process itself. This is the level of information that you need, the way it’s delivered, the sources of information and length of time it takes to decide. So how do you close more sales? Let’s compare buying cars & takeaway pizzas for a second

Cars

For example, a lot of factors go into what kind of car you’d purchase. You want it to be as good on paper as how it makes you feel. As well as this, you’ll probably want the information from several different sources before deciding to buy:

• You’d expect the salesperson to be forthcoming with mileage and warranty information
• You’d probably look at reviews online about the specific model and year
• You may even go to the lengths of directly talking to owners of the same model and year to hear their feedback

This may take several weeks or months and involve several conversations and meetings with people to discuss the car. Only then might you consider saying yes

Takeaway pizza

The decision making process is much quicker when ordering a takeaway pizza, for example. You already may have a good idea of what you’re looking for.

Because you know that you like extra cheesy pizzas, it matters less which restaurant you actually buy the cheesy pizza from because you can be confident that cheesy pizzas generally will taste how you expect it to. You’ll expect less information and expect it in a different way:

• You’ll probably look at their menu online and compare deals with other takeaway pizza places
• If you don’t know the place, you might check out some online reviews first
• You may not need to speak to anyone at all as you order it online
• If you do call to place your order, you’ll probably don’t need much information from the member of staff about the pizza

Depending on how hungry you are, the length of time taken to order a pizza can be a matter of minutes.

Meeting their sales process needs

What does it mean to close more sales by meeting their sales process needs? Whilst it’s always nice to talk about cars and pizza, the point is that consistently high results in selling anything are also about meeting their sales process needs. Below are some ways that you address what they need from you. Here’s 5 different factors that help you close more sales

1 – You understand their mindset

Customers view different purchases in different ways. For example, someone may find the ordeal of buying a new car quite stressful and expensive and therefore approaches it as a necessary evil. Conversely, someone may have literally spent their whole day thinking about what toppings and side orders they’re going to have because they’re just so darn excited about it!

This is a pretty simplistic example because this book isn’t about understanding your customer’s mindset. The point is, pizza is more delicious than cars.

2 – How they want to be talked to about the product/service you’re selling

The actual sales discussion partly depends on where it fits on the customer’s needs vs want scale;

Needs – Examples that fit closer to the need’s end of the scale include necessities like your utilities; generally speaking, people don’t want to talk in much depth about their electricity bill. As long as the bill isn’t outrageous and the lights turn on each day, that’s usually enough for a customer to be satisfied enough to sign up. These conversations can be much more matter of fact than sales processes closer to the want’s end

Wants – Examples that fit closer to the want’s end of the scale include things like purchasing works of art. For this, a customer would likely want to have a conversation that’s much more in depth to gain more context about it’s suitability to them

Again, 2 very simplistic examples. Conversations have much more complexity to them than the want’s vs need’s scale. The main point is that customers can have preconceived expectations of how they would be sold to, and this forms part of their decision making process

3 – What information they do/don’t want from you

This also leads on to what kind of information they’re expecting from you as part of the sales process. Whilst this also greatly varies from person to person, but you can also see particular products and services as more or less ‘technical’ a sale.

Back to the cars vs pizza example. Whilst it does vary from customer to customer, it’s more likely that a person might want to know the in’s and out’s of cars specifications when compared with the likelihood of customers asking the preparation methods or cooking temperature of pizza. The point is, the information they expect and what you deliver can impact a customer’s decision

4 – How you present the information

Which neatly leads us on to how you present information! Apart from tenders, most customers aren’t asking for your life story from a proposal. In fact, overly detailed or poorly presented proposals can be a huge turn off when it comes to picking a company.

Why? Because it makes it really hard for them to get the information that they need. Generally speaking, customers need to answer questions which are things like;

• Can I trust this company to turn up every day and do a good job?
• Am I confident that they will keep the standard that I want them to without any of my involvement?
• If something does go wrong, how quick and easy will they make solving the problem?
• Do they fit within our budget? If not, does the above value they bring outweigh the cost when compared to other quotes I got?

Fact is, most customers will simply glance at the proposal that took you hours to create. As such, your proposal needs to tell them all the general important headline info from a glance

5 – How you follow up

Given the choice, customers would rather not have to think about changing. It may seem a little alien to you, but customers can be well aware that they need to change their supplier but left to their own devices, probably won’t do anything about it. With so many other things to sort out, they find it hard to dedicate the time to sort it out.  

This is where you come in. Your job is to help them systematically answer all of the questions that they have about you and your company. Your job is to make it incredibly easy for them to tick all their boxes on:

• Level of detail
• Communication method
• Value for money

Being proactive in your follow up is a good thing because you can help them to answer all of the questions they have, so that they’ll give you an answer. Do this via email, phone, schedule a 2nd meeting, whatever it takes to help them answer all of the questions that they have

Book a strategy call with us

To help you close more sales, we can help with a strategy call to explore how you could make this happen in your business

You’ll speak with one of our Campaign Managers to explore how you can help you close more sales. At the end of the call, you’ll walk away with great insights into how you can grow your business!

Book a call here and we’re looking forward to helping you close more sales