Customer Empathy | The Financial Impact In Sales
In the traditional sales world, price is both a back and front end obstacle. When you are selling in a stagnant economy, this obstacle results in margin decay, impacting the company and the sales person.
When a prospect tells you that they do not have time or money, what they are really saying is that you have not conveyed enough value in their mind to give you their time or money! How well do you handle this objection? Do you handle it at all?
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Why is your prospect going to pay for something, that they don’t believe is worth anything? In other words if the problem has been something they have been managing for some time, WHY would they invest to resolve it now? The answer to this question opens the door to selling on value and differentiating your services from that of your competition. A perfect example of selling on value is the typical infomercial. Does any infomercial start with a rundown of the product’s features and benefits or how great the company who made the product is? No, they open with outlining the problem and the negative ramifications associated with the problem before any mention of the product they’re selling. Right about now, some of you may be saying to yourselves: “But in my industry they just want the darn price! Why go through this process? It may upset them or make them feel uncomfortable!” If you are saying this to yourself, it is YOU who is uncomfortable, not the prospect. This is known as Customer Empathy!
Why Objections are not Challenged: Customer Empathy is one reason that sales people don’t challenge objections. However, another more compelling reason for the failure to challenge prospects is that buying habits strongly influence selling habits. For example, if you are uncomfortable with people asking you about your financial situation, you will probably shy away from pre-qualifying a prospect’s budget prior to scheduling a meeting.
Case Study: Recently a Business Owner contacted Peak Performance because of two common barriers: Long selling cycles & the inability to differentiate their product/service from competition. Our first question was why these conditions existed? The business owner did not have an answer. However, after we spent some time with this organization’s sales manager, it became where the root cause of these symptoms lied: The sales manager talked about recently buying a new car—he was very excited to tell us what a great deal he got, a deal he attributed to the seven months he spent looking (for the same type of car) and working 19 dealerships to get the best deal. Do you think this sales manager: - really thought about it, - really did his homework and collected a lot of information, - did a lot of comparing? The more important question here is how effective do you believe this sales manager will be when he is involved with a potential buyer who wants to think about it or a buyer who is just in the information gathering phase? More importantly, how effective was he at giving advice to his sales team in dealing with long selling cycles? Do you see how one person’s weakness can create a snowball effect with the rest of a sales organization?