Every business needs to sell and the key to selling is correctly understanding what customers need.
Lots of people think they’ll never be any good at selling, but the key to success is to understand what your customers need. When this happens, you’re not really selling any more — you’re just making people happy.
The idea that great salespeople can sell anything to anyone assumes that people will buy products and services they don’t need. Some people, and indeed some organisations, thrive on this unpleasant mode of operation.
However, it’s not for me — and it shouldn’t be for you either. This way of doing business — the hit and run approach — is best suited to con artists pedalling products or services that are of little value to the customer.
Great salespeople believe in the product or service they represent. They are evangelists.
Many people who start a business do not see themselves as natural salespeople at all
As a business owner, you will be the best-placed person in your organisation to become the best salesperson, because no one else will have more belief in the product or service your business is offering.
Richard Branson, Donald Trump, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell… all great sales people; all great believers.
You may be thinking that selling isn’t for you. It’s just something you’re not good at.
You may see yourself as a planner, a creative or an administrator, not a salesperson. The idea of asking someone to part with their cash might not sit comfortably with you.
Incredibly, many people who start a business do not see themselves as natural salespeople at all.
But Richard Branson, Donald Trump, Steve Jobs and thousands of other great entrepreneurs that inspire us never bludgeoned anyone into buying something they didn’t need. And that is the point: sales is not about convincing someone into saying yes to something they don’t want; sales is about knowing what a customer needs and then supplying them with the product or service that fulfils that need. In short, sales is about making people happy.
Qualifying the customer is therefore a very important part of selling. This part of the process is often called ‘needs analysis’. In order to make someone happy, you need to know what they need.
For example, let’s say you’ve just bought a ski lodge in the Alps. It’s near some fantastic ski slopes and provides good accommodation too.
Ask yourself this: is good sales about convincing anyone who has the money that this is the place where they should spend their holiday? Some salespeople might say yes.
But would you honestly try to sell a two-week stay in your lodge to someone who didn’t ski? If you think that’s a good idea, you may end up approaching hundreds of people before you manage to convince someone to say yes.
A better use of your time would be to target people who could ski already.
Better than that, you could target people who could ski and were thinking about a ski trip. By doing so, you’re 50% there. You’re not selling now — you’re fulfilling needs.
