Solution Selling

How You Sell Makes All the Difference

Today, selling is harder than ever. Expert buyers know how to negotiate, want only the best, can choose from an array of vendors, distrust salespeople in general and will litigate at any hint of difficulty. This makes selling an almost vertical climb. To reach the summit, use advanced sales methods that make the “way you sell” the pivot point of closing sales. The best sellers intuitively know how to help buyers develop “action visions” – mental images in which buyers imagine using and benefiting from a product or service in a specific context.

This kind of selling requires understanding the “three levels of buyer need.” First, buyers experience “latent pain” from business problems they cannot solve or even admit. Second-level buyers feel “pain” they can recognize and acknowledge. They want a solution. Buyers on the third level have developed “vision” and see solutions. Your job is to “re-engineer” this vision so it includes your product.

The buying cycle also has three phases. First, the seller must earn customers’ trust, help them delineate what they need, and show that his or her product is the ideal solution. In the second...