One aspect of successful sales, B2B or otherwise, is anticipating your prospective buyer's alternatives. This allows you to have strategies in place to rebut objections and differentiate yourself. To determine which questions are topmost in their minds, understand how they evaluate their alternatives.
Whenever I hear someone talk about finding their unique selling point, the hair on the back of my neck stands on end. If you are in complex B2B selling, don’t waste your time looking for a unique selling point. Instead, deeply know your value proposition, which includes all the unique things you do.
Buyers tend to take the same journey every time they make a high-commitment purchase. They realize there is a problem and begin researching potential solutions. Unfortunately, they are not always methodical in their search.
Just when you think you have clinched the sale, the buyer springs a competitor on you, or someone inside the buyer’s company is suddenly suggesting an alternative method.
Ah, the good old days... when you could sell using a list of all the great features in your solution and a few benefits sprinkled here and there. The economy was good and it was easy to get a signature on a purchase contract doing little more than offering “saved effort” or “increased throughput.”
Nothing better makes the case for change in front of decision makers than showing the red ink on your buyer’s bottom line. A value calculator is a highly effective tool for displaying all of that red and identifying that it’s caused by a problem your product or service can solve.
Most of your prospects will focus on price once they think they have found a product or service that will meet their needs. It’s normal to want to know how much something will cost. However, it’s best to avoid responding directly to this question until you have established the problem and the value of solving that problem.
Figuring out what to charge for your product may seem as simple as adding up what it costs to make plus a percentage you call profit. Unfortunately, this “markup” or “cost-plus” method is common and can result in money left on the table and unnecessarily slower future growth.
B2B sales typically have long marketing and sales cycles due to the nature of the offering. Today’s buyers will put off talking to a sales representative as long as possible before finally committing to a first meeting.
If you aren’t selling on value, you are leaving money on the table. The question is, how much? Let’s go through the three problems with not selling based on value. Each of these events result in lost revenue and profits. Altogether, it can add up to a significant amount of profit lost.
