Sales Techniques Examples
Sales techniques examples for an ever changing world to which all salespeople now find themselves selling into. We know that sale success is a based on two main things, hard sale skills, like product knowledge, and soft sale skills, which are harder to define.
There is no doubt that selling today is highly competitive. Customers are more demanding than ever and even getting their attention is a huge challenge. Advancements in technology have made it so that customers can buy the products they need without you, or they can buy them from someone else without ever even leaving their office. So, every salesperson has to try to differentiate themselves. This means the needs and goals of any sales professional should be secondary to the needs of the customer.
But first, maybe a good starting point to is try and define what sales means today.
What Is Sales?
Selling means exchanging value for value. The basic rule of selling is that people do not buy products; they buy benefits. Sales is about getting someone else to take action, to teach customers something new and compelling and provide reasons for them to act. To be in sales today is all about recognizing the true motivations of buyers and aligning solutions that matches their needs and desires.
Sales Techniques Examples
These sales techniques examples are designed to provide food for thought. To put this into context, a B2B buyer survey recently reported that they believed that the purchasing process is more tedious due to more detailed ROI analysis (77%), more extensive research activity (75%), and increased buying group members (52%).
There is no one size fits all sales process, however most have certain steps in common including, identifying the type of customers who will buy, how to engage them, establishing sales conversations, building credibility, ascertaining if an opportunity exists, creating trust, presenting value and closing the deal. Understanding these sales techniques examples should help understand the various methods in sales in a way that benefits your customers and you.
The commitment to implementing any sales technique takes time and effort. The role of the salesperson is extremely challenging. Salespeople now operate within a complex, demanding and dynamic working environment where they are prone to experience an array of different emotions through their various interactions with customers and prospects.
Customer Target Selection
Customer target selection solves involves identifying who is your target customer. This underpins the sales activities, resources, and other strategies for both the salesperson and the business. Sales success is more likely to come from figuring out which type of buyer or business would understand the need for the product or service and recognize the most value in using it.
Doing this research also helps to visualize and prepare to have conversations with a specific buyer profile. It’s easier to start a sales conversation with a customer when we know background information, industry trends, position in the company, and any recent news. Get to know what ideal customer profile will respond best to the company’s value proposition and selling will become more fruitful. Truly understanding who the target customers is, is a fundamental step to almost any type of sales activity.
Know Your Value Proposition
Ultimately, every customer will opt to purchase products and services that improves their situation in some way, in other words – to extract value. What is value? Well, value equals the rational and emotional benefits any customer will receive from selecting a product or service minus the price they pay.
The value proposition for a salesperson to have in executing sales conversations is a short, compelling statement that articulates the specific benefits that the company, product or service is offering the target customer.
It is the acid test in sales to make sure salespeople have something to say, which answers the customers “Why Listen” and “Why Care” questions if they were to consider a buying journey.
In essence, a value proposition is a key building block in answering a customer’s question “why should we buy anyone’s product or service?”
Building Rapport
A professional salesperson talks a lot less than their customers do. The job of a professional salesperson is build rapport, then control the conversation by asking well-crafted questions that prompt the customer to talk more and disclose their needs.
Learning how to build rapport takes time, which is why it is one of the most difficult sales techniques to master. Building rapport is the act of building relationships with customers in which both sides feel there is something of value and are understood. Rapport in sales, builds upon the skill of effective communication, which requires that the ability to create shared purpose via open communication. Building rapport includes the ability to present ideas clearly, to listen without distractions, how a salesperson delivers the message appropriately and the content of the sales message is be clear and detailed.
Solve Problems
One of the most important sales techniques examples is to undertake to solve problems, not sell products. A customer wants a solution to a six inch hole, not buy a six inch drill. Too often salespeople are just too eager to talk about their products without understand the real pain points of the buyer. This happens because the salesperson has been conditioned to believe that they must get their canned sales pitch out on the table as quickly as possible. It happens automatically, like their brain is on cruise control as they wait for the customer to take a breath so they can jump in.
To ensure that they are adequately meeting the needs of the buyer and their company, salespeople should follow a consistent and precise plan of communication. So, before a salesperson gets to the conversation about what their company can provide, they need to ask a series of discovery questions to identify which if in fact an opportunity exists at all. Then, and only then, can they formulate a solution that would be the best fit for the customer.
To do this, salespeople need to acquire the confidence to explain they need to ask questions. Buyers are far more likely to accommodate and offer up answers when they give acknowledge and understand the value of the process. If salespeople develop the skills to be silent, attentive, and perceptive, they can tune in to the speaker’s gestures, subtle meaning, inner feelings, and unstated messages. This is how to solve problems
Present Value
The key to successfully present value is to make your presentations conversations. Present solutions and products but engage others throughout with questions and interaction. There’s an old saying in sales that’s still true today, make a friend, make a sale. We tend to like people who are most like ourselves, and we buy from people with whom we can relate and trust.
When presenting solutions, salespeople must hit the hot buttons of the audience, to address the values of what’s important the customer, their goals, plus restrictions or constraints.
Salespeople should also determine what persuasive approach, arguments, and supporting evidence that will hit home. What vital issues need to be addressed? What arguments or evidence could back-fire? Answers to these questions are learned when using effective questions introduced earlier in the sale process.
In order for customers to change position, they must be convinced that they’re in for some real pain now or down the road. Today, buyers budgets are tight, so selling features and benefits alone just won’t cut it. Pain, real pain, unlike a need, want, or problem, is the significant harm a prospect will suffer without the solution and if they delay implementation. It exceeds any needs to problem selling, motivating to undertake change now.
When presenting value, our sales techniques examples here is to answer these three questions somewhere within the presentation body:
1) Why do business with you?
2) Why do business with your company?
3) Why act now?
Know Your ROSE
Every salesperson should know their ROSE or Return On Sales Effort. They reality is not every customer has the budget, the motivation or can overcome the internal roadblocks to make a buying decision. End result, they’re not a good fit for the company. Salespeople need to value their expertise and time; this includes knowing when to walk away.
Closing the Sale
Research shows that successful salespeople control the sales process and come away with a result they’re satisfied with, a sale. This is regardless of any compromises they may have had to make along the way. As part of our sales techniques examples, we suggest that when it comes to closing the sale, salespeople should seek agreement where they and the customer both achieve what they want, meeting both obvious and underlying needs, without compromise.
This sales technique focuses on developing mutually beneficial agreements based on the interests of each party. Interests include the needs, desires, concerns, risks, and fears important to each side.
So, salespeople should reflect on if the customer is ripe. This means the customer feels that they are in an uncomfortable and costly situation. At that “ripe” moment, they seek or are amenable to proposals that offer “a way out.” of their status quo position.
When a sale is not ripe, it is when one or more of the buying group will not to come to the table (internal roadblocks) to negotiate the final deal, then the opportunity is usually not ready for the final proposal.
Finding the ripe moment to enter negotiating the closing of the sales requires insights, Yes commitments and customer acknowledgement that they must find a way out of their current situation.
Another few factors to consider:
The prospect has the bandwidth to handle working with you. All Pain Points have been addressed. Tension has been created, in other words some level of FOMO -Fear Of Missing Out exists. This could be cost of inaction, fear of losing market share, loss of productivity, fear of future implications etc.
Closing the sale boils down to that the salesperson has shown their company has been selected as the best solution.
Wrap Up
We couldn’t possibly cover all the sales techniques examples in one article. How feel free to read our many articles on sales, sales training and how salespeople can improve their sales skills. Happy Selling.
