The last few weeks I have talked about the five buying decisions that the customer must make before they will buy. It is great insight if you are new to sales, or want to gain a new perspective.
Today I want to focus on the biggest debate in sales. It revolves around the following question:
If the customer decides to use a competitor, do we as sales people confirm their decision is the right one for them?
How many times have you had this happen? You’ve spent hours, weeks, months working on a project for a customer and they decide to use your competitor’s solution. Everything is going well in the progress of the sales process and just before you expect to get the awarded business, you receive a phone call from the customer staying they are going a different path, or worse they ghost you. It’s a kick to the…gut. Negative thoughts about how good of a sales professional we are run through our heads and we wonder if we will ever sell again.
Then thoughts of the customer not being smart enough to see our value soon take over. The customer just didn’t want to do business with us anyways. We tend to do this to keep our pride up so that we can walk into the next customer and hopefully change out luck for the better.
I believe the customer is always right when buying a new product / service. I do not want to undermine their decision because if I do then I have told them they are not smart enough to make a decision. Who wants to do business with someone that has the audacity to do that? If they do not buy my product / service then I do acknowledge and confirm they made the correct decision for themselves while wishing them well.
What is key is that if the customer does not see the product meeting their specific needs, then they just can’t make the proper decision to buy our product. This is not the customer’s fault. I know customer service representatives that have answered calls with fuming customers screaming that the product was not what the sales person told them it was. Customers have told me that they had bought products and regretted making those purchases just because they did not want to hurt the sales person’s feelings.
It is our duty as sales professionals to make sure we are answering the customer’s needs with our product / service. If we are not answering those needs, then the customer has every right not to purchase from us. The customer is the one holding the money and has every right to make the decision on where they invest resources. We must make sure that not only we sell to them, but we walk with them for the next 90 days so they are successful. Our future rides on their success.
So where do you sit on this topic? Post your comments on this blog so others can see your view points!
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”