The Buying Process - Helping Your Customer Discover Their Unsatisfied Need

The successful sales rep matches the steps of their selling process to the customer's buying process. In other words, for the customer's Need, Requirements, Solution, and Deal, the sales rep;

• helps the customer Explore their Need;

• helps the customer Define their Requirements;

• Proposes the Solution that best meets their requirements;

• and Closes the Deal.

The move from one step to the next depends on your ability to ask the questions that leads the customer to realise the need, build a set of requirements, and accept that your solution meets the requirements. It"s important to remember that you can"t recommend a solution when they"re just starting on the buying process. Only when they"re looking to finalise the solution does it makes sense to offer one.

Let"s start at the beginning and talk about exploring need.

The total of those you do business with is, by definition, 100%. Of that total, maybe 15% are buying at any one time. That leaves 85% in the Need phase. Of the ones in the Need phase that you can reach, you"ll discover they divide into two categories. Some will have a satisfied need and some will have an acknowledgement of need.

What"s the difference? Well, those with a satisfied need believe they have what they want. There"s nothing to do. They have a new car sitting on the driveway, for instance, and they"re happy with it. Those acknowledging a need, on the other hand, may realise that this car doesn"t quite live up to expectations but they"re not thinking of changing it just yet. With a few good questions you may be able to move satisfied need at least as far as acknowledging need.

The unclear need stage is where selling begins. Selling here is about helping your customer to the next stage and getting them to commit to do something. How? By helping them identify their need and showing them the pain in doing nothing or the benefit in taking action. Perhaps there"s a future opportunity they were unaware of or they were unsure how to find out about other options. Your job is to help them think through the process and move them from being satisfied to an acknowledgement that there are other possibilities.

And the best way to do this, of course, is through exploration. Discover the state of their business and how things would change if they grasped some opportunities. Or, what would failure to grasp an opportunity look like? Your sales skills will tell you which buttons to push to most effect: is your customer motivated by the benefits of success or the pain of failure?

You"re not selling a product at this stage. It"s not even worth mentioning the name of a product. You may introduce the capabilities of your organisation, perhaps, but you don"t know enough about your customer"s needs to be able to tell them there"s a product that can meet them.

Above all, this is a great time to begin to shape your customer"s future request for proposal (RFP) by helping to steer needs towards areas where your organization scores more highly than your competitor.

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