Does Your Customer Sleep Like A Baby?

Sales people are often taught to find the customers pain.

But what happens when the prospect doesnt have any pain?

Weve got it covered, the prospect says. Things are pretty good.

There must be something, the salesperson persists, trying to get the buyer in touch with pain that surely must be there. Whats your biggest challenge? What keeps you up at night?

I sleep like a baby, the prospect says.

Well how about your ordering process? How many hours a month do you spend processing invoices? What would happen if an order didnt show up on time? Or if its damaged?

The problem, of course, is that the seller is trying to create pain where it doesnt exist. The ordering process works okay. Those three or four hours a month spent processing invoices arent really a problem. Orders almost always show up on time and in good shape. And if they dont, well a phone call to the vendor and the problem gets fixed.

Who wants to do business with someone whos trying to create pain? No wonder prospects back away.

Theres a different way to approach these buyers, says sales guru Steve Von Hoene. Because even if they dont have pain, nearly all of them have a preferred solution. In other words, even when things are going well, they almost always could be going a little better.

The great thing about a preferred solution is that its all positive. Youre not focusing on what hurts. Youre inviting the customer to dream. So in an ideal world, you might say, what would your ordering process look like?

In an ideal world? Lets see. I could create routine purchase orders with the click of a button. Id like the system to automatically match invoices to purchase orders, so I dont have to. Id like to see how my spending tracks against last years. Id want an alert if inventories get too low

See the difference? You havent asked about a customers pain. Instead, youve helped the customer envision something better than okay a vision you might be able to turn into a reality.

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