“Make a sale, you’ll make a living. Build a relationship, you will create a fortune.”
Sales are imperative for growing any business. Without sales, businesses struggle to survive in today’s competitive environment. However, traditional sales techniques like ‘Always be closing’, cause businesses to fall behind without a futuristic growth.
Before I share my opinions, I’m adding some stats from Hubspot on creating a positive sales experience, according to buyers.
- Listen to their needs (69%)
- Don’t be pushy (61%)
- Provide relevant information (61%)
- Respond in a timely manner (51%)
Sales techniques like ABC emphasize heavily to bulldoze through a sale. But, this increases the risk of losing the overall business as the requirements are not fully understood. The customer experience is quite dissatisfactory and this will cause a large impact on the reputation of the business.
“People don’t like to be sold, they love to buy” – Jeffrey Gitomer.
A Sales Superstar knows that a customer is for life. He takes mammoth efforts to build an ever-lasting relationship with the customer and that is what you call a positive Customer Experience. I have had the luckiest opportunity to work with many such Superstars. The conversation between them is quite interesting to observe as it focuses more on the customer’s problems and interests rather than a forced sales pitch.
Experienced salesperson represents themselves as a knowledgeable person with solid domain expertise in the service they offer. Customers tend to listen to such an expert and this will make a huge impact on their purchasing decision and improve their outlook about the company. Trust and confidence are built forever before the deal is signed.
“After a positive experience, 83% of customers would be happy to provide a referral”(source).
Don’t jump the gun by pushing through a sale. Instead, tailor the sales process to create a sense of control thus making it easy for the customers to feel that they are purchasing an experience instead of a service.
Good explanation, helped me to understand.
Thank you. And, I hope it helps.
RKR
Tailoring the sales process…well said Ramesh jiii…gave me a glimpse of the sales approach at my starting journey…
Thank you, Laxman. I hope it is of help
Amazing write-up! 👍
Thanks, Akshay
Yes Ramesh, I totally agree with your points. Sales team should not inform the customer as everything is possible to get the sale close as won. This sets up a wrong expectations to customer and results in negative experience in overall customer’s journey in utilizing the product and does not reach their capabilities/needs. By this the business is impacted as well the churn rate increases and by that revenue is also impacted. So customer should be set with right expectations and hence a process workflow should be designed for good customer experience for our customers long journey with our product. What’s your thought Ramesh??
Agree. A CX journey should be designed and implemented in an organization to improve customer experience. In my next blog, I will be talking about the role of Presales in the CX and sales journey. Maybe this would help the business to look at a larger picture.