In my previous article I was talking how If you live by price – you will die by price.

Let’s talk further about how to close the deal without discounting.

If you base your offer on your price only, there is a good chance that someone will have lower price than you, or you can end up in the bidding war that distracts from solutions. To avoid that, base your proposal in achieving more goals for your prospects, not just to save money, because every other salesperson will say exactly the same.

Customer wants to see the value not in your product; he wants to get the value from your solution to their business problem. They must perceive unique value from you. If they cannot differentiate you from the competition, there is no reason to buy from you.

Probably you can’t differentiate much with your product, I am sure you have some unique features, but your competition has them too. Customers today can easily substitute your product with the one from your competition and still be satisfied.

So how can you differentiate?
That’s where trigger events are coming to the game.

Trigger events can help you with recognizing needs and opening the door to have a meaningful conversation with customers who have events happening. Just to be different from the competition is not really important to your customers. What they would like to see is added value.

What creates customer value?
-    Skilled sales force
-    Sales process itself
-    Understanding their business situation today and adapting to their particular wants and needs

If you recognize customers’ needs and create the value for them, customers will move from initial meeting to a decision much easier. Communicating the value is a traditional view of selling, but in today’s world you can’t survive if you are not creating the value for the customer. And make customer realize that they are on the market.

Sales person needs to play a leading role to create the value for his customers. In each step of sales process sales person can create the value, but the most value can be created early in the process by helping customers to define their needs.

This is true especially in consultative sales where sales person can create the value recognizing customer needs with trigger events and helping them to define them better and deeper. Sales professional needs to create the specialized situation and put them on the market even they didn’t felt like that before he entered the picture.

If you are just selling your product – you are missing the point and you will die by price, as you lived by price. Customers are looking beyond the product; they are looking for the solution to their needs and your understanding of their business situation. Many times that should include help and advice too.

Different customers must be treated differently, what works for one customer may not work at all for another. Knowing about trigger events happening to your targeted prospect (and more different events is always better) you will have a very powerful tool to adjust your sales presentation to their needs, recovered with trigger events.

Concentrate on understanding your customers’ business issues, and show them how to solve more than one goal with your product, create a value for them and you will go home with the contract in your pocket, whatever the price is.

Let me repeat it here once more – if you don’t show the value you will definitely not win whatever your price is. Even if you have a lowest price on the market, it does not mean much to the prospect, because they don’t see the difference between your product and ones from the competition. And many buyers are buying from someone who had crafted a compelling solution to their needs, then comes understanding of their needs, and after that the financial part of the deal.

Your goal as sales professional is to create value through how you’re selling, not just through what you’re selling. To be a real sales professional ready for 21st century customers, here is no question you need to change your approach, but when and how?

How to win the deal without discounting is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

The problem:

There has been a revolution in everything in our society except in sales. “New” sales books are still talking about the same tips, tricks and techniques that were working in the last century. Certainly selling has the look of 20 or 30 years ago, features and benefits are still the main topic at every sales training, and management is pushing the same old ideas about cold calling, pipeline volume, and counting every activity (volume vs. relationship).

But selling itself is changing. The whole business environment is more dynamic; your customers are better informed and prepared. They know more about you and your products then you will expect. They are more educated; they are searching for information by themselves; and they are looking to providers to understand the buyer’s situation, needs and business. If they know so much about you, how can you try to sell them the same product or service without knowing their business situation or their needs?

Sales can’t continue to resolve 21st century situations in the business world using last-century tips and tricks. Tomorrow’s sales challenges can’t be met using last-century’s understandings and strategies. Those skills and information are not wrong; they are simply incomplete for today’s market, and that is why Sales 1.0 does not work anymore. This old model is too slow, too unpredictable and too expensive for today’s businesses.

The solution:

The 21st Century changes the rules of engagement. New knowledge and skills are needed and also a new definition of sales to help you in your search for your next customer, to accelerate revenue growth, and to give you a competitive advantage. In today’s fast-paced world of information, customers don’t want to be talked to; they want to be involved, engaged and connected.

Sales 2.0 is about aligning and combining the Web 2.0 technologies with the sales processes to have more effective customer communications and to increase productivity and effectiveness. Sales 2.0 will help you sell more at a lower cost. And that is all that counts in sales. Sales 2.0 combines the science of selling with the art of selling.

Register today for the webinar:  Sales 2.0 vs. Sales 1.0

What you will learn…

• Why Sales 1.0 is too slow, too unpredictable and too expensive?
• How to move from sales-centric approach to customer-centric approach?
• How to make buyers come to you?
• How to build a huge Rolodex?
• How to warm up your cold calls?
• Where and how can you find customers who are in the market TODAY?
• How can you be in front of your customers at the exact time when they are in the market?
• How to network more efficiently (with two mouse clicks)?
• How to identify your most promising leads and give them top priority?
• How to create the value for your customers?

Suggested Attendees: All sales people, sales managers, and small business owners

Register today for the webinar:  Sales 2.0 vs. Sales 1.0

Other registration options:

1. Visit http://sales20.eventbrite.com/ to register and pay online
2. To register by phone call us at 416-840-4982 OR 1-866-876-4761
3. Send us an email: registration@scienceandartofselling.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Customer Support Hours are 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM EST Monday through Friday.

Sales 2.0 vs. Sales 1.0 is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer

There has been a revolution in everything in our society except in sales. The sales industry has crawled while other professions have been running: “new” sales books are still talking about the same tips, tricks and techniques that were working in last century and bringing the success to sales people.

Certainly selling has the look of 20 or 30 years ago, features and benefits are still the main topic at every sales training, whether internally done or from an outside trainer, and management is pushing the same old ideas about cold calling and open-ended questions, but customers are changing rapidly in their behavior, buying habits, knowledge about the situation on the market, and most important – their expectations from sellers.

Selling itself is changing. Whole business environment is more dynamic, we have many and breaking new products on the market, and competition is bigger, harder, and stronger day-by-day. Buyers are more educated, they are searching for information by themselves, and they are looking from providers to understand buyer’s situation, needs and business.

Sales cannot continue to resolve twenty-first century situations in the business world using last-century tips and tricks. Tomorrow’s sales challenges cannot be met using last-century’s understandings and strategies. Those skills and information are not wrong; they are simply incomplete for today’s market. Unless this is acknowledged and the sales professional admits that he does not know all there is to know about sales and customers behavior, there can be no hope of continuing excellence in sales as is.

I believe it is finally the right time for the dinosaurs of sales to become extinct.

The 21st Century changes the rules of engagement. New knowledge is needed and also new set of tools which will include the technology, to help you in your search for your next customer.

Technology is developing at a pace that rarely anyone can catch up, and especially the last two decades many trained sales people are not in the position to utilize the advantages of the technology. In this regard, the technology can be your friend or foe.

Web 2.0 enables Sales 2.0 and many sales people can take customer communications into their own hands and to an entirely new level. Sales reps have more control over the tools that they use, and they can be always on, answering to customers questions in the matter of minutes and not hours or days.

Trigger events are great tool set to help you find new opportunities on the market for your product or service. With trigger events it will be easier for you to find companies that have immediate wants and needs. You are looking for events that can trigger the sales opportunity for you.

Trigger events can be divided depending where they have been triggered, inside or outside the company. Therefore we have two sorts of trigger events:

Internal trigger events are events triggered inside of the company or business.

External trigger events are one that we cannot influence, but we need to adapt to a newly created situation. It affects the customers’ success and could change business environment dramatically.

Learning about the trigger events, what they are, where to find and how to use them, your benefit is that with this newly acquired knowledge you will be able to qualify prospects faster and find your next customer much easier than before.

And not just that – you will be able to put customers in the market who didn’t feel that way before you contacted them. Trigger events can be a very powerful weapon for sales person who wants to be able to qualify prospects faster and understand his customers’ situation, and even identify needs with customers together.

With trigger events you will be better prepared for challenges that customers are putting in front of us each day. You will be equipped with a completely new set of tools needed to recognize who could be (and should be) on the market today for your product or services, giving you the better understanding where you should focus your selling activities.

Learning about this new set of tools you will be reminded, motivated, and pushed to do something more for your sales career and your sales numbers. A sales person needs to grow, to try to reach that next goal and to have a life filled with success in his or her profession, which makes life more worth living.

Selling in 21st Century is a post from: The Science and Art of Selling by Alen Majer