You can’t use high-pressure sales tactics anymore. Most people see right through them. Instead, you need to switch to a new low-pressure method that positions you as an expert and the consumer as a partner. Here’s how to do that.
Explain Benefits, Not Features
Customers don’t want your product. They want whatever it is your product will do for them. Sounds strange and maybe more like semantics, but it’s not. Think about it for a moment. When is the last time you went to the hardware store to buy nails, or to the grocery store to buy something to eat?
When you bought the nails, you didn’t necessarily want nails. You wanted to nail something to the wall or to something else, right?
Same with food. Yeah, maybe you wanted a particular food, but you were buying food because you were hungry. You were going to eat it. You weren’t buying it just to have it.
Your customers think the same way about your product or service. Don’t focus on what you’re selling. Focus on what it does for your customer.
Manage Leads
One of the best ways to reduce pressure during the selling process is to invest in a good lead management application. Why? Because with a lead management app, you can send out emails periodically instead of hammering the prospect on the phone.
Informational or educational emails also set the “tone” of your business relationship. They tell the prospect that you’re not there to just sell them something. You’re there to help them.
Tell Stories
Telling stories is one of the oldest methods of selling known to man. When you tell a story, you don’t address the prospect directly. Instead, you build a hypothetical scenario that might happen to the client, or a “life lesson” that you’ve learned.
In doing so, you make the story relatable to the prospect, and he or she makes the connection on their own. If you do a good job, the product or service practically sells itself.
For example, let’s say you’re selling pool cleaning equipment. A customer walks into your store and asks about what you sell. You tell him. Then, he asks about price. Do you see where this is going? You’re going to get into a bidding war, and the prospect might leave.
Instead, when the prospect walks in the door and asks about your product, show it to him, but also bring up an interesting story you about the product.
Maybe you had another customer come in last week looking for the same product. You recall that the customer had a similar problem – something weird growing in the pool. The customer left without buying anything that day but came back a week later when his pump broke down.
Turns out the green slime wasn’t harmless after all and the client had gone with an off-brand product that ended up damaging the pool pump. And, the customer ended up buying both the pool pump and the product from you.
Do you see how a story like this build value in your product? You might not be the cheapest, but you’ll get the job done.
If you can do this consistently with prospects, you won’t have to sell as much. You can tell stories and let the prospects sell themselves.
Christian Bonham works as a freelance marketing consultant. He enjoys the chance to share his insights with an online audience and has written for a number of different websites on the subject.