By JOHN KAGECHE
In Summary
- Information is no longer a single lane, from seller to buyer. It is now a dual carriage way and the buyer’s side has eight lanes (and growing) while the seller’s is still one.
Make a customer not a sale. I stumbled upon this quote and found that the six words crystallised the essence of selling today.
Today, more than ever, the customer is spoilt for
information and choice. We take it for granted, but before the Internet,
the only source of information was the seller. If I wanted to travel to
the Maldives, I would first look it up in the Atlas (remember, the
Atlas?).
I would then go to a travel agent who would, after
asking me my preferred dates of travel, consult his computer and present
me with a print- out of flights available complete with routes and
respective fares. The only second opinion I had was another travel
agent.
Today, the first opinion is the Internet (cheap
flights) and for accommodation, as a foreigner, nothing beats my
Facebook friend in Nairobi who tells me about hostels in South B that
don’t show up in my Internet search in New York and my travel agent is
clueless about.
Information is no longer a single lane, from seller
to buyer. It is now a dual carriage way and the buyer’s side has eight
lanes (and growing) while the seller’s is still one. Purely making a
sale is no longer sustainable. Making a customer is.
And making a customer calls for new skills. And the
reason why they are new is because they were hitherto considered time
wasting. After all, where else will the customer go?
Before, the answer to that was “the competition.”
And the seller would reason, we are the cheapest, or fastest or most
reliable. Let them go, “watarudi tu”(they’ll return).
Now they have more information than you have. By
the time you are pitching for the job to install your new software, the
buyer has sourced quotes not merely from the competition locally but
from India and China too. The skills that will carry you through are not
the razzmatazz of information over load.
What will work for you is approaching the sale as a
marriage not a fling. Go into it for the long term not short. This
means patience, education, integrity. Patience because the buyer is
defensive- you made him so. How?
Over the years, selling has become a fear-based
relationship. Several unfortunate experiences later, buyers fear they
are being talked into buying something that’s not right for them; they
fear they are making foolish decisions because they lack information.
It requires patience for the buyer to open up to
you; to trust you. That may explain why the huge account you have just
landed for your IT firm, has only ordered a cartridge after two
months-they are testing you. Impatience will see you fail.
Education is not just about product knowledge; it’s
about demonstrating that you genuinely understand the buyer’s pain
(patience) and showing (not just telling) him, how “based on your vision
for the building, the price of the elevators from China may be a steal,
but the cost will be higher because in 18 months you will have to
replace them.
Let me share with you what we have consistently
found over the last 10 years…” Even after exercising the patience of
Job and the education of a Sunday School teacher, having the integrity
to let go of a sale because you cannot meet the need is a skill to
exercise if we are to make a customer; that, plus the integrity to refer
the buyer to the seller who can. To thrive in selling today, strive to
make a customer not a sale.
Mr Kageche is Lead Facilitator, Lend Me Your Ears; a Sales Training and Development firm. Email:lendmeyourears@consultant.com
No comments :
Post a Comment