Quite possibly the most important and fundamental sales technique for just about every sales professional, will be to understand the priorities their customer has. Priorities in pretty much any company typically relate to the business drivers and corporate strategy established by its executive management team, the chief executive officer, or perhaps the board of directors.
Those priorities trickle down throughout the company into departmental initiatives. Once you understand their priorities and initiatives, you can see how your products could facilitate a faster time to resolution. Since their priorities are typically driven by executive management, they will always be funded projects with predetermined deadlines.
Here's a perfect example of how corporate priorities turns into revenue for a smart sales person. A year or so ago, the business I worked for had a corporate priority and requirement to automate the process of keeping track of our customers, managing information regarding each of our relationships with them, and streamlining the forecasting along with other sales processes. This initiative was established at the president level and led by the executive vice president of sales. There was a twelve month deadline to find and implement a customer relationship management (CRM) application. Had you been the sales representative supporting my company, and were selling a CRM solution, and knew about this priority along with the associated deadline before all of your competitors, you would not only have a jump on your competition, you would also know that you had a very motivated customer with a very real compelling event. As an end result of this priority, my company purchased and implemented a multi-million dollar solution inside the twelve month target.
Another example where this worked for me was with one of my customers who had a corporate priority to improve compliance and reduce risks. They had failed an audit given that they didn't have tight control of who had use of their financial systems. For that reason, they had a requirement to implement an automated access control security system to lock down their servers and applications to their "authorized" users. By understanding their priority, I knew this was an important and funded initiative. Since I also knew the importance of the project for my customer, and my company had a viable solution, I became their priority so they could appreciate how I could enable them to solve their problem. Furthermore, I was in early to perform a proof of concept with our security solution which resulted in a multi-million dollar sale for me personally and my team.
Here's a number of the many advantages derived from knowing my customers priorities and the success we achieved with this particular sale:
- My team was first to the table to help my customer determine the success criteria for their project that had been based upon our solution. This made it a lot more difficult for our competitors.
- I was able to directly map our solution to the corporate priority which in turn made me considerably more relevant and facilitated my access to their senior executives.
- I was able to clearly determine the importance and timeline for my customer which helped me obtain the best resources to support the proof of concept.
- My knowledge enabled me to accurately forecast a multi-million dollar opportunity since I had a very compelling event and knew about my customers deadline.
- I did not have to provide special financial incentives to close the deal and managed to maximize the revenue that me and my team received.
- The success from this project along with the many advantages my customer received, greatly increased the credibility of me personally along with my company which led to many additional product sales.
As we discussed, when you focus your time and attention directly on understanding your customers' priorities, you'll minimize and even eliminate time wasted with people or projects which aren't really important for your customer. Additionally, you will personally become one of your customers priorities and maximize your own sales.
Those priorities trickle down throughout the company into departmental initiatives. Once you understand their priorities and initiatives, you can see how your products could facilitate a faster time to resolution. Since their priorities are typically driven by executive management, they will always be funded projects with predetermined deadlines.
Here's a perfect example of how corporate priorities turns into revenue for a smart sales person. A year or so ago, the business I worked for had a corporate priority and requirement to automate the process of keeping track of our customers, managing information regarding each of our relationships with them, and streamlining the forecasting along with other sales processes. This initiative was established at the president level and led by the executive vice president of sales. There was a twelve month deadline to find and implement a customer relationship management (CRM) application. Had you been the sales representative supporting my company, and were selling a CRM solution, and knew about this priority along with the associated deadline before all of your competitors, you would not only have a jump on your competition, you would also know that you had a very motivated customer with a very real compelling event. As an end result of this priority, my company purchased and implemented a multi-million dollar solution inside the twelve month target.
Another example where this worked for me was with one of my customers who had a corporate priority to improve compliance and reduce risks. They had failed an audit given that they didn't have tight control of who had use of their financial systems. For that reason, they had a requirement to implement an automated access control security system to lock down their servers and applications to their "authorized" users. By understanding their priority, I knew this was an important and funded initiative. Since I also knew the importance of the project for my customer, and my company had a viable solution, I became their priority so they could appreciate how I could enable them to solve their problem. Furthermore, I was in early to perform a proof of concept with our security solution which resulted in a multi-million dollar sale for me personally and my team.
Here's a number of the many advantages derived from knowing my customers priorities and the success we achieved with this particular sale:
- My team was first to the table to help my customer determine the success criteria for their project that had been based upon our solution. This made it a lot more difficult for our competitors.
- I was able to directly map our solution to the corporate priority which in turn made me considerably more relevant and facilitated my access to their senior executives.
- I was able to clearly determine the importance and timeline for my customer which helped me obtain the best resources to support the proof of concept.
- My knowledge enabled me to accurately forecast a multi-million dollar opportunity since I had a very compelling event and knew about my customers deadline.
- I did not have to provide special financial incentives to close the deal and managed to maximize the revenue that me and my team received.
- The success from this project along with the many advantages my customer received, greatly increased the credibility of me personally along with my company which led to many additional product sales.
As we discussed, when you focus your time and attention directly on understanding your customers' priorities, you'll minimize and even eliminate time wasted with people or projects which aren't really important for your customer. Additionally, you will personally become one of your customers priorities and maximize your own sales.
About the Author:
Look here for more free information about Proven Sales Techniques as well as Effective Ways To Increase Your Sales.
