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In actual sales, salespeople often need to negotiate with different types of customers. They must successfully recommend their plans or proposals to these customers, and after obtaining the customer's consent, they also need to persuade the customer to provide strong support in many aspects of implementing the plan or proposal. Therefore, mastering persuasive selling techniques is very necessary.
Through the practice of some companies and research by marketing experts, it has been found that in the process of persuasive selling, the most effective way is to distill the benefits that the plan or proposal brings to the customer and provide sufficient evidence. Therefore, salespeople must be very clear about which benefits are most valued by customers. Once these are clear, salespeople can be targeted, carefully design, and introduce and persuade customers around these benefits, usually achieving good results. At the same time, a thorough understanding of the customer's business philosophy is the foundation for effective persuasive selling.
1. Four Facts You Must Know
In the sales process, customers are not the consumers of the product; they first consider what benefits the product can bring them, such as whether it can increase sales or profits. In actual business negotiations, salespeople need to deeply understand customers, especially accurately know the following four facts:
a. What are the customer's goals? b. What are the customer's views? c. What is the customer's current situation? d. How is your product performing at the customer's end?
2. Six Key Benefits You Must Understand
In addition, salespeople must understand what benefits customers mainly hope to gain. According to research, sales experts have found that the most important benefits are the following six:
a. Save the customer time; b. Expand the customer's sales; c. Reduce operating costs; d. Attract more customers; e. Reduce out-of-stock situations; f. Generate more profit.
In the actual persuasive selling process, you must firmly remember the four facts and six benefits mentioned above and apply them flexibly in practice to achieve your goals effectively.
3. Two Abilities You Must Possess
To increase salespeople's performance, the best way is to effectively increase the customer's sales volume. In this regard, the customer and the company have the same goal. To successfully achieve this, the key is whether the salesperson has the following two abilities:
a. New market expansion concepts and development capabilities; b. The ability to transform the above concepts into a logical sales presentation that is easy for customers to understand and can successfully guide customers to take corresponding actions.
4. Three Common Problems
Through observation and statistics of some salespeople's actual sales behaviors, it was found that:
a. In the observed sales behaviors, less than 10% of sales presentations clearly articulated plans to effectively increase sales or profits; b. Most sales presentations did not make customers understand what benefits the implementation of the plan or proposal would bring to their company. Instead, salespeople only focused on introducing the features of the product and promotional activities. They did not realize that customers do not care about your product and activities, but about what benefits these products and activities can bring them. c. Lack of two-way communication with customers, leading to customers not openly discussing their concerns and doubts. Salespeople get entangled in false objections or minor issues, making persuasive selling unsuccessful for a long time, sometimes even causing customer resentment.
5. Customer Psychology Analysis
When conducting persuasive selling, customers will definitely care about the following issues regarding the salesperson's business proposal:
a. Does the plan you propose match his own situation? b. Is this plan operable? c. How to execute this plan? d. What benefits does it bring to his company or him personally? e. What do you require of him? f. Is this plan designed specifically for him?
When conducting persuasive selling, salespeople must anticipate these questions and provide sufficient explanations. Salespeople can make full preparations before the persuasive negotiation to reduce the occurrence of objections.
6. Persuasive Selling Model
Marketing experts, through observation of a large number of salespeople's actual sales behaviors, have summarized a persuasive selling model (see figure below). This model is adopted by many multinational companies such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola. It is widely proven to increase the chance of success, and almost all sales training experts recommend that salespeople follow this model.
(1) Introduce the situation First, briefly explain the customer's situation so that the customer clearly knows that the salesperson has understood and considered their specific circumstances when making suggestions. When stating the situation, the salesperson must use effective methods to arouse the customer's interest; if the actual situation is the opposite, use communication skills to ask about the customer's true needs. Only when the customer shows interest can you proceed to the next step.
(2) State the plan When stating the business proposal, the salesperson must be concise and clear, and the presentation should match the customer's needs and interests, and tell the customer about specific action recommendations.
(3) Develop detailed procedures When and where? Who is in overall charge, and who is responsible for each item? How to proceed? Where are the benefits for the customer? Where are the customer's objections and questions? Evaluate each customer's actual situation and help them make decisions.
(4) Emphasize key benefits Although this step has been mentioned in previous steps, you should still repeat the most critical parts and explain how your business proposal fits his opportunities and needs.
(5) Execute Prepare all necessary materials in advance so that the customer understands the full content of the plan, ensuring the plan's executability; at the same time, propose next steps.
7. Four Conditions for Reaching an Agreement
Reaching an agreement means persuasive selling is successful, which requires the following conditions:
(1) A positive and confident attitude. It must be based on the fact that the quality products or promotional plans introduced to the customer can truly help customers achieve their goals and meet their needs.
(2) A clear purpose for the task to be accomplished. Salespeople must clearly know what goals they want to achieve; this is also basic.
(3) Understand different techniques for reaching agreements and know how to apply the most suitable one in different situations and with different customers. According to actual observation, some customers only make decisions under urgency; at this time, salespeople should appropriately show firmness, but be careful to maintain a degree, otherwise it may lead to a falling out; some customers need repeated assurances after listening to the presentation; some customers do not like lengthy introductions, and in many cases salespeople need to remain silent; sometimes immediate action is needed, and sometimes it is better to stay still.
(4) Be good at capturing signals beyond the customer's words. Pay attention to listening to the customer's speech, observe their expressions and actions, and identify signals of agreement. If you receive signals of agreement and have provided enough information, then act immediately and clearly propose conditions to reach an agreement.
8. Six Techniques for Reaching an Agreement
(1) Directly ask for the order: "I want to order 10 pieces, okay?" (2) Offer choices: "Do you think I should order 10 or 15 pieces? Which is more suitable?" (3) Ask questions: "Do you want delivery?" "How many cases do you need?" (4) Make promises: "As long as you agree, I can immediately arrange more shelf display space for you." (5) Use special factors: certain very special factors require immediate action, such as price increase dates, promotional activity dates, special quotas, and goods delivery before Mid-Autumn Festival, Spring Festival, and Christmas. (6) "If, then": "If I do this activity during the Spring Festival, do you have enough display space in your store?"
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