July 14, 2016- ISSN# 1545-2646
Feed the customers appetite
You may have heard the statement – don’t go grocery shopping when you are hungry because you will tend to buy more.
When there is a physical, mental or other driving force which is present in a situation it will tend to move a person to take a more immediate action. This is why people buy things. People and businesses have needs and wants. Those needs and wants gradually work their way to a point of purchase. Some quicker through the process and some so slow they may never get there.
In the business world those wants have to mature into needs (required to support the business) and those needs require a budget to buy.
As your sales team works their magic in the marketplace, they need to identify the difference between needs and wants. Both are possible sales but have different timeframe to bring to closure. They must also make sure they are interacting with the correct resources. Decision makers who have the ability to say yes and not just the people who can say no. This is the real decision maker in the transaction.
As referenced earlier, about going to the grocery store, if you are hungry when you go, this creates a pending event. Your need to eat motivates you to buy food to satisfy that need. Another element impacts the process of closing the purchase. That is the timeframe which places an endpoint for the purchase to happen. This deadline to fix/resolve a situation drives the need for the purchase. Has your sales team identified the decision maker. Have they confirmed money is in the budget to spend. If there is no impending deadline to push the sale along then the close of the sale most often keep sliding in time.
As difficult as it is to verify who the correct decision maker is and to confirm they have the wherewithal to spend budget money, defining the event to drive the purchase is an even more challenging element of the sale. Pinpointing the event deadline will move the buyer to purchase.
There are some artificial deadlines: the end of a fiscal year and the budget must be spent in that financial cycle. Some weather related deadlines cause certain actions to be taken such as the cold of the winter or the the heat of the summer. These are environmental things which cause buying action in the heating and cooling services industry.
What ever your product or service is, you need to understand what those impending deadlines are so that you can dig into the sales process to get the answer.
This week, speak with your sales team on those closed sales in recent history. Identify the events which caused the sale to close. You may find some common elements which can be used to help secure more business at certain times of the year.
Wondering how to strategically sell more of your product or service? Call JKL Associates at (313) 527-7945 and set up a meeting to investigate the next level of selling.
Questions or comments – email us at partners@jklassociates.com or call our Office at (313) 527-7945
Copyright – JKL Associates 2016
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