No, I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about your customers.
At the core of everything we do as sales people, it’s about making money, that is producing revenue for our companies. We know how our companies make money: it’s through the revenues we create in selling their products and services. It’s also through our companies’ abilities to develop, produce, deliver and support those products/services profitably. Easy, we get that.
But that’s not what drives our success as sales people. That’s not what creates our ability to engage our customers. They don’t care about how we make money—some don’t seem to care that we do make money (but that’s really a misunderstanding)!
What drives our success as sales people, at the very core, is understanding how our customers make money—then showing them how we can help them make more!
This applies to everything, from the most complex IT solutions, manufacturing equipment, parts/components, to paper clips and toilet paper.
Customers shouldn’t be buying anything, unless they know how it helps them make money. It’s our job to connect the dots to help them understand this.
There are basically two ways to make money: drive the top line (revenue growth) or the bottom line (profitability/growth). Usually the latter is achieved through helping them reduce costs.
Everything the customer does—consequently, everything we must do with the customer—has to contribute to one or both of these.
If we sell embedded products/components, we help them make their products better—whether it’s improved functionality or performance, improving their quality to improve their customer perceptions/reduce warranty costs, provide capabilities their customers want, or many other things. We help them sell more or reduce the costs of supporting those products, by reducing failures.
If we sell capital equipment, systems, services, even consumables (this is where paper clips and toilet paper come in), we help them and their people be more productive and efficient. We help them sell more without increasing their spending proportionally. We help them reduce costs. We may help them generate revenue through finding new customers, acquiring them, and keeping them happy so they buy more.
So it’s critical that we understand how our customers make money and how what we sell helps them make more!
Sometimes, the people we work with in the buying process may not understand this. It may be an engineer looking for a component, an IT person satisfying a user need, a manufacturing executive looking at a new machine tool. It may be a facilities or HR person looking at a new food service provider or janitorial services. They may not be focused on how they make money—they’re just doing their jobs.
But we have to help them understand, we have to help them understand why it’s important, because their management cares! We help our customers get what they want by helping them respond to questions their management will pose—and those questions always have to do with how does this help them make money.
This applies to every customer! Clearly, with commercial organizations we know they have revenue, profitability, growth, share, and valuation goals. Not-for-profits aren’t dissimilar; they need to attract donors and development funds, they need to deliver on their mission cost effectively. Government organizations need to get the most out of the tax dollars they are spending. So while the phrasing may be awkward, every customer cares about how we help them make money.
Do you understand how your customer makes money?
Do your customers understand, specifically, how what you are selling helps them make more money?
Can you connect the dots between your customers’ goals and the people in the organization doing the buying?
Are you making them comfortable in communicating this value up the food chain, as they look for approval?
This article was originally published by Partners in Excellence
Published: February 27, 2014
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