Creating Competitive Advantage
It is a well-known fact, more recently backed up with evidence from Warwick Business School, that customers prefer to buy from sales people who clearly understand their needs before they meet. They want to deal with people who can talk knowledgeably about their business, both operationally and strategically, from the first moments of the first meeting. They don't have time to waste with getting-to-know-you, fact-finding sessions - they expect sales people to know the key facts already.
Yet this is NOT the usual customer experience.
Most sales people assume it is the duty of the customer to explain their needs. They believe their role is limited to explaining how their product or service fills the gaps better than anyone else's. This may have been enough in the last century. It's not enough now.
Customer expectations have changed dramatically. They have changed because people now have regular access to the web. As a result, they are better informed and much more aware of their choices. They don't need sales people to explain the features, functions and benefits of their products anymore.
Today's customers expect sales people to know about them, their business, and the challenges their business faces. They want ideas and answers at the first meeting. Most sales people just don't do the necessary preparation, because they don't know how, they don't have enough time, or because their company doesn't provide the tools. Without the knowledge they need - and some ideas to lay on the table at the first session - sales people enter meetings with their customers as a 'me too' organisation at best. At worst, they are significantly disadvantaged before they even enter a sales process. No wonder sales pipelines are so unreliable.
The generic market research produced by so many organisations is all but useless in these scenarios. You need specific, opportunity creating knowledge, not just data. Knowledge that is focused on the needs of each individual customer. Knowledge that enables you to align your thinking to them and show immediately how you can add real value to their business.
ICDL have developed a number of workshops that enable organisations to effectively analyse the market drivers and needs of ANY given sector and how to analyse these needs to create competitive advantage and differentiation for your customers.
Related workshops:
SUCCESSFUL EXECUTIVE SELLING
lies at the core of ICDL's thinking.
Differentiation from an ever growing band of global competitors can no longer be achieved through better positioning of product, service or solution, so your approach to selling has to change [+]
ICDL'S RecruitSMART PROGRAM
ensures successful recruitment of fully trained and capable Executive level sales people.
If Executive level selling is key to successfully differentiating your company and growing EBIT, yet sales people of this calibre are rare - how can I achieve success? [+]