Many articles talk about customer value, how a salesperson can create value for their customers, and the importance of selling value.
At the beginning of sales training programs, we often ask salespeople to think back to a sales call where they did an extraordinary job in creating value for a customer and to answer this question: “What did you do differently that enabled you to create extraordinary value for your customer?”
What do they share? Regardless of what’s in a salesperson’s “bag,” three comments are the most popular:
The most often heard comment is some variation of “I actually sat down and planned the call rather than thinking about what I was going to do when at Starbucks just before it.” Whether it’s this comment or one like it, we often hear some variation of this theme.
A second comment drills down on how the call was executed. Salespeople tell us that asking questions made the difference, rather than them talking most of the time.
The third comment is that the salesperson focused on identifying customer needs. This of course is music to the ears of all involved in sales training.
Often, we pose a second question: “How can you do a better job than your competition in creating value for your customer?” Or, in other words, how can you separate yourself from the pack? Five ideas we hear most often from salespeople are:
Follow-through. Do what you say you will do when you said you would do it.
Anticipate the future – be proactive.
Have a strategic plan so you’re continuously moving toward meeting the account objective.
Leverage your internal resources.
Focus on the customer, not the competition.