Customer Aligned Selling
The Customer Has Changed Have You?
Profit, Expenses and Risk, and Personal Motives – all buying decisions are made on those issues.
Do your sales reps know the business at that level? In sales, most sales reps lead with product or service discussions. All their sales efforts are focused trying to close the deal. Because of these closing tactics they have to lower the price to get the deal. Most sales reps lack the understanding of the customer root buying criteria and the customer’s desired outcome. Too many sales reps lack an understanding that business owners and decision makers only make purchasing decisions when it affects one or more of 4 issues: revenue, expenses, risk or a personal motive. Do your reps really know how to align your offerings with business outcomes in these 4 areas and not focus on price? Or, are they trained to just show up and do a product demonstration? Are they racing to the close or are they discovering what the customer truly wants, needs and how the customer will make their buying decision?
Results from Implementing Customer Aligned Selling
- banking services company exceeding annual sales quota
- banking services company achieving 17% sales growth in yr 1, 14% in yr 2
- physical therapy company increasing net revenue by 8% in 7 months and increasing referrals by 150%
- financial services firm immediately reporting more productive sales calls building value and trust
- industrial and safety supply company achieving record revenues above 22+% growth
- healthcare quality services organization aligning with their customer’s buying criteria shortening the sales cycle
Are your sales reps aligned with how your customer makes decisions and wants to buy?
There are 4 ways people make decisions based upon their brain quadrant preferences. Each quadrant preference will view information and have different buying criteria. For instance:
- A Quadrant (blue) buys on logic, facts, reason and looks for a quantifiable Return on Investment (ROI).
- B Quadrant (green) approaches a buying decision in a practical, planned and purposeful methodology and buy a well vetted offering that is a safe choice.
- C Quadrant (red) evaluates people and offerings using emotions, thoughtfulness and gut feelings. They will value what others say. Their buying style involves a personal connection.
- D Quadrant (yellow) looks at the visual, inventive, and future implications in buying. This person buys what fits strategically and is innovative.
If your sales rep is selling from the red or green quadrant as most are trained to do and they are selling to a high blue quadrant preference prospect, then they are saying the wrong things, giving the wrong clues and most likely frustrating the prospect.
When my clients have implemented the Whole Brain Thinking methodology, they have experienced shortened sales calls and sales cycles by as much as 30%. This is an integral part of Customer Aligned Selling.
Are your forecasts based upon your reps activities or the actual buying stage of your prospect?
There are 3 stages and 4 decision criteria that a buyer goes through in a complex sale. Do your reps know where their prospect is in the buying stage? If not, they may be doing the right activity at the wrong time thus adding more risk into the buying process. For more information on this topic read the book Rethinking the Sales Cycle by John R. Holland.
Are your sales processes aligned with the 7 Rules of the Customer?
According to Howard Stevens in Achieve Sales Excellence reporting the results of 80,000 customer surveys over 14 years, there are 7 rules that customers have if you are going to be their vendor of choice. Do you know the 7 rules and are you implementing these rules into your sales processes?
Applying 20 Years of Behavior Research to Sales:
- Address these common sales problems: selling on price, sending the proposal too early, unrealistic sales forecasts and the buying process stalling.
- Discover the most important purchasing criteria of your customers and where the old way of selling falls short of these criteria. (Based upon 20 years of research).
- Learn through exercises and role play the science of how people communicate, make decisions and buy. (utilizing the Hermann Brain Dominance Index).
- Implement a pathway to create trust and reduce risk.
- Move from just another sales rep to a “valued business partner”.
- Align with what is most important to your prospective customers in terms of your company’s offerings, quality, price, and your level of sales competence.
- Learn the key decisions that all buyers go through and how to avoid creating obstacles to your own success and your customer’s.
- Practice how to reduce communication time frames as much as 30% – sell faster and in your effectiveness in serving your customer.
- Effectively and practically apply what you learned on your next sales call.
The Customer Aligned Selling curriculum is designed to be customized to your organization, your sales issues and your customers. It can covered in a 3 days workshop, but the most effective process is to conduct the training in small amounts over 8-12 weeks focusing on successful implementation. Investment per person will depend on number of participants and length. Investment ranges from $1475- $2100 per person.
For small businesses, I offer a 2 day non- customized Customer Aligned Selling course that is open to any company. This class is heavy on material but leaves the application up to the participate. This class is heavily discounted at $895 per person. To improve mastery of the material, participants may re-take this class whenever it is offered at no additional charge.