If people buy from people, how can we read our customer’s mind?
Often sales people neglect to focus on the individual’s perceptions when we are selling. Product or service features and even business benefits vary in importance based on the psychology of the person we call “the customer”.
Behavioural science has demonstrated we are creatures of habit. These habits define us and make us different. Many sales people sell the way they would like to buy. This has one obvious flaw.
Customers often see the world differently to sales people.
The keys to improving your sales results can often be just improving your understanding of the people you deal with. The customer’s IT team, pre and post technical personnel, finance and logistic people, sales admin team and back office personnel will require skilful co-ordination to ensure effective result from your sales time. Sales people who best manage their people resources consistently produce better sales results.
Sales people ability to understand, influence and motivate these people is key to helping you achieve your sales results. Knowing your product’s technical details or even your competitor’s secrets has rarely proven to be the major reason for hitting your sales target.
Product specs and competitor information goes out of date very quickly. Understanding people styles has a life time of uses.
In the fast and furious world of selling, customers can’t compete with the “people skills” of most sales people. Consequently they learn to control their emotions, trust and communication, resisting rapport building, covering up their real intentions and resisting the relationship development.
Sales people typically compensate by dominating verbally and filling in the “moments of silence” with lots of chatter and assumption making.
Understanding your customer’s preferred motivations & interests create more open and honest discussion, trust building & rapport.
Key factors are noticing the differences between the customer’s language and their unconscious behaviour. Often these are incongruent, indicating there is a distinct difference between their words and their real thoughts.
Your customer’s response is in their behaviour, not their words!
Selling today is complex enough. Sales people can no longer close large sale alone! Building a virtual sales team is vital. Management, service, financial & logistics and operations are key to achieving your sales results.
Sales people must learn to influence and communicate in order to align everyone’s efforts to achieve the customer’s desired outcome.
Using internationally recognised BELBIN® Team Roles behaviour model, our SALES PSYCHOLOGY training program train your sales people how to question, negotiate and close, by adapting their behaviour style to better match their customer preferences. This results in increased familiarity, trust and open communication.
Being able to assess how customer’s think, what outcomes they need and how they rationalise their decisions increases negotiation outcomes, acceptance of solution proposals and conclusion to sales.
