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sell to needs , not to clients.

Often businesses focus on the bottom line when trying to gain leads that turn to active sales of products or services offered by the business. This is the wrong way of looking at gathering business, the best way is to take a customer focused approach which requires that we seek needs instead of seeking clients. When we seek clients we tend to impress upon a candidate a possibly false sense of need for our products or services, when this is done we are being disingenuous and are not customer focused but are self focused and this doesn't maximize long term returns. In the event that after the sale the client determines that our offering does not mesh with their processes as was promised they will keep this in mind and be sure to warn their friends who could be potential clients about your non customer focused tactics. The best way to ensure that right sale after the pitch is to be 100% honest about how our product or service can be useful to the prospective client by isolating if they have a true need for our businesses services. This involves actually caring enough about the client to find out how their business works and to determine if adoption of our product or service can make those processes more cost effective and over all more efficient. So when dealing with potential customers always seek to determine their need for your service or product and if it doesn't exist, provide them with the honest truth of that fact... by doing this you will gain the respect of yet another business that through its contacts and clients may bring you potential clients whose needs your business can serve perfectly. Sales is about both getting the deal now from those that need your services and delaying services from others later by proxy of those who did not need your services but remembered the fact that you took the time and effort to tell them the truth about that fact in your interactions with them. This is how a good business builds long term interest and ensures steady growth.
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Unknown said…
Just as I was reading this post, I remembered what a person on Margarita Island told us about selling (Marketing, he said) which is exactly what you're saying: You cannot force any clients to buy the products you are offering, you must entice them with the truth about what you have.. The same happens in Education, for teaching, one has to carefully think about our students' needs to design what we are to teach them... Perhaps this notion (think about needs, first) should be applied in all the aspects of life.
November 1, 2008 at 4:18 PM
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