A salesperson's job boils down to convincing prospects that they are better off with the product than they are without it. If you do this successfully during the first stages of the sales process, then closing the sale will follow naturally. But if you neglect to prove the product's benefits to your prospect, you'll find closing to be an uphill struggle. You'll find yourself in the position of closing AND meeting objections AND presenting your product all at once. No wonder salespeople have trouble closing in these conditions!
So before you get to the closing stage of the sales process, you've got to confirm that you have indeed convinced the prospect of the benefits to come from owning your product. And it can't be just any benefits. You must match the benefits to the prospect's specific needs or you'll be wasting your time. After all, if a prospect wants something that will speed up his manufacturing process and all you've been talking about is how cheap your product is, you won't have much luck closing him.
Therefore, before you start talking about benefits you must be sure that you understand the prospect's hot-button needs. Ideally you should uncover at least three important needs, and a few less important ones. Why so many needs? Because first, the more needs you know about, the better you can target your benefit statements; second, you may be wrong about the importance of one of those needs, so having others to target will ensure that you're discussing at least one critical prospect need; and third, your product may not be particularly attuned to one of the prospect's needs, but if it can meet two other important needs then you still have some solid benefits to provide.
Once you've asked the right questions and uncovered the prospect's needs, you've got to match those needs to the product's benefits. Since you'll almost certainly have to do this on the fly, you'd better know your product very well before you ever arrive at the appointment. Sometimes you'll be able to uncover a need or two early in the sales process, and you can prepare your benefits statements in advance, but more often the needs-uncovering phase and the benefit-explaining phase will all happen in a single appointment.
Explaining your product's benefits isn't the end of the process, either. Just because you mentioned a benefit doesn't necessarily mean that the prospect understands why that benefit is important for him. So before you head into the close you've got to verify the prospect's level of understanding. This is easily accomplished by asking a few open-ended questions. For example, if your prospect disclosed his need to speed up the assembly line and you then brought up the product's ability to save manufacturing time because of its extremely good reliability, you could pause and say, “Does that make sense to you?” or “How does that sound?” The prospect's response will usually clue you in as to how he feels about the benefit you've just mentioned.
If you've successfully matched benefits to needs and confirmed that the prospect agrees with your viewpoint, the close should be a slam-dunk. You can test the waters by saying something like, “OK, let's get this order in today and you can have your part on the assembly line by Tuesday.” If your prospect pushes back at this point, you missed a step somewhere. Either your benefit/need combination isn't compelling enough to create immediate action, or there's a problem you didn't uncover – perhaps the person you're speaking with doesn't have authorization to buy, or he's already signed a contract with another vendor. Whatever the cause, another round of questions from you can still uncover the issue and possibly save the sale.
By Wendy Connick
http://sales.about.com/
So before you get to the closing stage of the sales process, you've got to confirm that you have indeed convinced the prospect of the benefits to come from owning your product. And it can't be just any benefits. You must match the benefits to the prospect's specific needs or you'll be wasting your time. After all, if a prospect wants something that will speed up his manufacturing process and all you've been talking about is how cheap your product is, you won't have much luck closing him.
Therefore, before you start talking about benefits you must be sure that you understand the prospect's hot-button needs. Ideally you should uncover at least three important needs, and a few less important ones. Why so many needs? Because first, the more needs you know about, the better you can target your benefit statements; second, you may be wrong about the importance of one of those needs, so having others to target will ensure that you're discussing at least one critical prospect need; and third, your product may not be particularly attuned to one of the prospect's needs, but if it can meet two other important needs then you still have some solid benefits to provide.
Once you've asked the right questions and uncovered the prospect's needs, you've got to match those needs to the product's benefits. Since you'll almost certainly have to do this on the fly, you'd better know your product very well before you ever arrive at the appointment. Sometimes you'll be able to uncover a need or two early in the sales process, and you can prepare your benefits statements in advance, but more often the needs-uncovering phase and the benefit-explaining phase will all happen in a single appointment.
Explaining your product's benefits isn't the end of the process, either. Just because you mentioned a benefit doesn't necessarily mean that the prospect understands why that benefit is important for him. So before you head into the close you've got to verify the prospect's level of understanding. This is easily accomplished by asking a few open-ended questions. For example, if your prospect disclosed his need to speed up the assembly line and you then brought up the product's ability to save manufacturing time because of its extremely good reliability, you could pause and say, “Does that make sense to you?” or “How does that sound?” The prospect's response will usually clue you in as to how he feels about the benefit you've just mentioned.
If you've successfully matched benefits to needs and confirmed that the prospect agrees with your viewpoint, the close should be a slam-dunk. You can test the waters by saying something like, “OK, let's get this order in today and you can have your part on the assembly line by Tuesday.” If your prospect pushes back at this point, you missed a step somewhere. Either your benefit/need combination isn't compelling enough to create immediate action, or there's a problem you didn't uncover – perhaps the person you're speaking with doesn't have authorization to buy, or he's already signed a contract with another vendor. Whatever the cause, another round of questions from you can still uncover the issue and possibly save the sale.
By Wendy Connick
http://sales.about.com/
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