Do you know what keeps your customers up at night? Do you know what concerns they have about their job and business? If you don’t know, you should. Prospects and customers don’t care about the products and services you’re marketing to them. They care about what challenges you help them overcome. So, from a sales perspective, if you don’t understand how your solution fits their needs, you may struggle to overcome inertia.
How Does Your Solution Fit Their Need?
Imagine for example that you’re a purveyor of non-slip footwear for use in manufacturing. Customers don’t care about the fact that your product has great slip resistance. They are interested in what that feature does for them. What may float their particular boat is that the enhanced slip resistance footwear reduces accidents in the workplace by 30% thereby reducing claims, costs, and downtime. It may, thereby, increase profitability. Using the product may deliver more up-time . It could even enhance employee satisfaction. Managers may find that it may also give them a much easier life with fewer staff complaints with a lower risk of personal and corporate liability.
Junk the Features-led Intro on the Phone
Too many cold calls start with a features-oriented sales pitch about the products, services and the company being represented. Whilst features amplify the benefits, they aren’t what it’s about. The sooner callers turn this approach on its head, the more engaged conversations they will have. And, the more positive outcomes and revenue they will generate.
Buyers are time poor. They get innumerable cold calls each week. They have a million things on their to-do list and they’re constantly spinning business plates. Then, they receive a telemarketing cold call from a sales person trying to flog them some commoditised solution that they’ve seen before. They have heard the pitch a thousand times, and they may already use a similar service or product that does the job. What type of response should most cold callers anticipate given this scenario?
Differentiate the Call And the Offering
The fact of the matter is that when the caller realises that he / she needs to differentiate the call as well as the offering, the quicker they will generate more, and higher, value results. That’s not as hard as it seems. It’s about finding something appealing and presenting it in a way that doesn’t sound the same as everyone else. If the intro is based on some of the likely challenges that keep the buyer up at night, the telemarketer is much more likely to receive a favourable response. That’s even when there isn’t an immediate need. At worst, it will increase the chance of doing business at some stage with that client as opposed to a quick brush off. This becomes part of the sales pipeline.
So, before you make that next bland telemarketing sales call, think about your customer first. Put yourself in their shoes buying your products and services. Ask yourself the question ‘What’s really in it for them?’ And, make sure you convey those messages early, and succinctly.
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