High on the list of factors contributing to commercial success is ‘communicating in customer value’. Your customer loves it when you don’t talk about engineering, content or sales, but rather about how you are helping them solve their challenge. An analysis of more than sixty ICT companies, however, shows that sales departments experience this as one of the most difficult challenges. With the right sales training, you can do something about this and get the key to the new way of selling.
ICT suppliers are perfectly capable of describing what they deliver. The website describes the advantages of the products and services. They also provide sales training on how to distinguish themselves from the competition. The salesperson’s bag contains the technical service descriptions, including SLAs and deliverables. There is nothing wrong with that, because those are the products and services that the customer can buy.
Sales training: speak more in terms of customer value
But the question is: when does a customer actually buy and what does he buy? The answer is obvious, but complex: the customer buys a solution to his problem. An important focus of sales training is to understand the customer’s problem. And perhaps even more important, that the customer feels understood! This requires well-developed personal skills, genuine interest and the will to help the prospect.
Questioning techniques that are used in Consultative Selling are relevant here. The CLUSS methodology is a way to identify a customer’s need and to build a bridge to the solution. The result? You are not seen as a salesperson but as a trusted advisor. And where trust increases, price becomes less relevant. CLUSS stands for:
- Context: Questions you ask to obtain relevant information about the customer’s existing situation.
- Latent need: Questions that explore problems, difficulties and dissatisfied feelings.
- Urgency: Questions that create depth, because they explore the effect or consequences of a customer’s problem. By quantifying the consequences, you can make a business case.
- Solution benefits: Questions about the value or usefulness of a solution, which help to build a bridge to your solution.
- Shared solution: Questions that are intended to form a joint picture of the possible solution direction and the associated decision-making process.
The door to cross-selling and upselling opens
You can take the customer’s ‘pain’ or challenges as a starting point, but that can also be a goal or ambition. Give sales training on the right questioning technique and challenge them to score an order without talking about technology, services or products. Talking about customer value is the key to the new selling. Not just sales, but certainly also the customer, experience this as a blessing and would not want any other conversation partner. That is the best thing that can happen to you. The door is then wide open for cross-selling and upselling, to achieving more commercial impact.
Turnaround leads to more commercial impact
When translating sales training into offerings, the trick is not to talk about products or services, but about the value that sales offers customers. It has been shown that those who succeed in doing so achieve at least three results:
- A shorter sales cycle.
- A higher conversion ratio from lead to order.
- Higher spending by the customer.
- Less discussion about the price.
- A side effect, but not a hard, linkable KPI, is that cross-selling and upselling opportunities increase.
So stop selling technical solutions. Instead, make a list of your primary services, determine your target group for each service and make the link to customer returns.
Do you want to know more about how you can sell smarter, or are you looking for effective sales training and education? Then get in touch with us!