Most buyers don’t just wake up and say, “yes, I need to purchase new software today,” (or whatever it is that you sell). Most buyers experience “pain” or problems that are impacting their business, driving a need for a solution. These problems must be solved for. When the “Pain” or the problems become so high, customers then decide to look for a solution. Your job is to connect the dots between your customer’s pain points and your solution (your products). It amazes me how many salespeople don’t do this, or at least don’t do it well.
It starts with listening closely to your client’s needs, their business issues, and their pain that they are experiencing. We call this doing a discovery with the customer. You want to uncover or discover their pertinent needs and reasons for buying, the problem that they want to solve, the severity of the problem, and if your products and services could truly benefit them. You want to dig deep and understand the emotional and financial impact that their problem is causing them.
During the discovery, which can be done via conference call, or in-person meeting, if you let the client talk and if you ask plenty of good qualifying and open-ended questions (see my video on this below), they will open up and tell you about the problems that they are trying to solve for. Your goal here is to understand their specific pain so that you can then present and articulate how your products/services would solve their issues.
It is during this presentation, or next meeting with the customer, that you want to recap the client’s problems and needs, and then be pointing out (connecting the dots) between those problems and needs, and your product (solution). You literally have to say, “Dave, when we first talked you mentioned that you have a need for “X”. I now want to show you how my product will address “X.” You then show Dave what he is looking for, and then afterward you ask Dave, “Would what I just showed you address your problem of “X”? Dave will most likely say yes if you understood his needs correctly. If he says no, then then you might have missed the mark by not fully grasping what he was in need of. You can still recover by digging deeper into what he really meant (lesson learned for next time to ask more questions). For every time Dave gives you a “yes” response to you showing him how your product would solve his needs, you are that much closer for him to say “yes” to moving ahead with your proposal. You literally connect the dots all throughout your meeting as you walk Dave through how your product would solve his problems.
This sounds so basic, right? Not in reality. So many salespeople show what they want to show and go off on tangents and discuss things that may not be important to your customer. This will only result in you losing the sale to a competitor who did a solid discovery, asked about the customer’s pain points, recapped them, and then connected the dots between the client’s problems and their solutions. Always be connecting the dots!
-Happy Selling!