Improve Sales Metrics by Confirming Your Prospect’s Needs
While you are browsing the new and used models on a car lot, you typically have your buying criteria in mind and the reason you’re buying a car. Maybe that reason is to get to work, or to taxi your family around town. You also have absolutes—a certain budget, plus a list of must-have features.
This information is extremely valuable to high-performing salespeople. It allows them to talk specifically to the buyer’s needs—what we call in the sales playbook: diagnosing. If the prospect’s priority is family, you are likely going to forget about the convertible and recommend a model with a set of headrest displays for the backseat to make road trips more enjoyable.
The fact is, however, that most buyers don’t go into a sales situation always realizing that they have these issues or opportunities the salesperson is diagnosing. So that means diagnosing is about a salesperson saying, “Based on what you’re saying, you’re trying to address X, which will allow you to achieve Y.” Diagnosing means dialing in, and is based on our best-educated guess.
It’s up to the salesperson to get the buyer to acknowledge that the factors they outlined are correct, and then get the buyer to a point where they are willing to listen to specific suggestions for addressing those factors. The diagnosis is about getting a prospect to say, “Yes, I’ll allow you to present further, because what you say makes sense to me.”
After all, the right solution for the wrong problem is worse than the wrong solution to the right problem.
For more ideas on performing a sales diagnosis with you prospects, get your copy of Selling is an Away Game, available online at Amazon.
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