Understand Your Customer's Buying Process and Maximize Your Sales
Author:
Kevin Davis
ISBN:
9780814416853
Format:
Paper or Softback
Price:
$18.95
It's not so much how you sell. It's how your customer buys!
The biggest mistake you're making in your sales career right now is equating a faster pitch with a faster close. Believe it or not, you will actually experience greater success if you slow down.
Slow Down, Sell Faster! shows you how to stop jumping the gun and work with your customers to identify and quantify their real needs, so by the time you begin your pitch in earnest, you're already halfway home. Featuring a simple yet powerful eight-step process and practical, repeatable techniques, Slow Down, Sell Faster! is packed with examples from the author's extensive experience, plus research on customer buying processes—rather than traditional selling processes.
This buyer-focused approach to selling extends to proposals and presentations, loyalty and retention, and, of course, cultivating more business. Each step in the book corresponds to a role you should adopt to meet a customer's needs at each stage of the buying process.
There are two sides to every sale. In today's extra-challenging business climate, understanding the buying process is where professional selling should start.
About the Author
KEVIN DAVIS is president of TopLine Leadership, a sales and sales management training company. His revolutionary eight-step process is used at Citigroup, ADP, Bayer, Sprint-Nextel, IKON Office Solutions, Global Imaging Systems (a XEROX company), and dozens of other Fortune 500 companies.
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"This is a great book, a breakthrough in modern selling! Kevin shows you how to make more sales, easier, and with greater certainty than ever before."—
Brian Tracy, author, The Psychology of Selling
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"The Chally Group Worldwide has interviewed over 80,000 business-to-business customers and found they are most loyal to salespeople who understand their buying needs and buying processes.
Slow Down, Sell Faster ! shows you how to become one of those salespeople - a world class sales professional."—
Howard Stevens, Chairman and CEO, The Chally Group, Worldwide
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"As the provider of choice for our customers' business technology needs it is imperative that we have a sales process focused on the customer buying cycle.? Years ago, we selected Kevin Davis' sales model. We've used the flexibility of the program to train the majority of our sales force on this powerful consultative selling methodology. ?We've measured outstanding results."—
Dan Cooper, Executive VP, Field Operations, Xerox, Global Imaging Systems
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"Salespeople involved in today's high value, complex sale will find that Kevin Davis' book provides exactly what they need to know to close the deal. This book provides solid, practical advice that professional salespeople can immediately use and apply."—
Stephen J. Bistritz, Ed.D., President and Founder, SellXL.com; Co-author, Selling to the C-Suite
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"The need to be more
buyer -focused is clear to most all Chief Sales Officers; how to do it is not. In
Slow Down, Sell Faster! Kevin Davis offers a concise roadmap for how to stop paying lip service to this concept and make it a reality for sales reps and their managers."—
Jim Dickie, Managing Partner, CSO Insights
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" Pick this one up, read it, study it, think about it and read it again. It will be worth it."—
PCB007.com "...must read for anyone selling big ticket products particularly in a B2B environment."—CEO Blog
"...provides much needed perspective change on the whole selling process…great resources, first hand examples, and lots of techniques."—Suite 101 Sales/Marketing Careers
"…compiling all these techniques into one, easy-to-understand manual…gives a salesperson the upper hand in approaching nearly every sales challenge."— BlogonBooks
"I have no hesitation in recommending this as a standard and well-thumbed text on any sales manager's bookshelf, as well as a practical 'how to' volume for sales people.."—Changingminds.org
"...highly recommend this revolutionary and must-read book...to any sales manager, salesperson, or any organization serious about developing an effective and customer focused sales process."—Blog Business World
"...how to best navigate the piranha-infested swamp that is your prospect's internal corporate politics."—About.com/Sales
"…a volume packed with sales wisdom…book might very well make sales managers take a breath and rethink their priorities."—ForeWord Reviews
"...breaks one of the most entrenched myths of selling: that a faster sales pitch leads to a faster close."—Top Sales World
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"This is a great book, a breakthrough in modern selling! Kevin shows you how to make more sales, easier, and with greater certainty than ever before."—
Brian Tracy, author of The Psychology of Selling
"The Chally Group Worldwide has interviewed over 80,000 business-to-business customers and found they are most loyal to salespeople who understand their buying needs and buying processes. Slow Down, Sell Faster! shows you how to become one of those salespeople —a world-class sales professional."— Howard Stevens, Chairman and CEO, The Chally Group, Worldwide
Faster sales pitches won't lead to faster sales. The key to speeding up the sales process is to actually slow down and get in sync with your customer's buying process.
Customers don't care about your selling process. They're moving through their own buying process, a set of predictable steps that doesn't match how most salespeople sell. With the highly effective techniques in Slow Down, Sell Faster! , you'll learn how to help your customers through each step of their buying process faster, and with the odds shifted in your favor.
Sales guru Kevin Davis has taught thousands of salespeople at a veritable "who's who? of Fortune 500 companies. His eight-step method unleashes the power of slowing down each sales conversation, asking more questions, identifying needs, and supplying solutions—in the right sequence, with the right approaches. It's an especially effective formula for high-stakes sales involving multiple decision-makers that delivers big rewards. You'll learn how to:
• match your sales behaviors to your customers' needs at every step of the buying process • get more appointments—especially at the C-level—by using a problem-focused approach • combat your most lethal competitor: customer complacency • use probing questions to diagnose small problems that can point to bigger needs • master the complicated politics of complex sales • overcome common selling dilemmas, such as customers who go silent at the eleventh hour • and more.
You already know how to sell. It's time to learn how people buy—to slow down so you can sell faster!
"As the provider of choice for our customers' business technology needs it is imperative that we have a sales process focused on the customer buying cycle. Years ago, we selected Kevin Davis' sales model. We've used the flexibility of the program to train the majority of our sales force on this powerful consultative selling methodology. We've measured outstanding results.? - Dan Cooper, Executive VP, Field Operations, Xerox, Global Imaging Systems
"The need to be more buyer-focused is clear to most all Chief Sales Officers; how to do it is not. In Slow Down, Sell Faster! Kevin Davis offers a concise roadmap for how to stop paying lip service to this concept and make it a reality for sales reps and their managers."— Jim Dickie, Managing Partner, CSO Insights
"Salespeople involved in today's high value, complex sale will find that Kevin Davis' book provides exactly what they need to know to close the deal. This book provides solid, practical advice that professional salespeople can immediately use and apply."— Stephen J. Bistritz, Ed.D., President and Founder, SellXL.com; Co-author, Selling to the C-Suite
Kevin Davis is president of TopLine Leadership, Inc., a leading sales and sales management training company serving clients from diverse sectors. He has 30+ years of experience as a salesperson, sales mana?ger, sales trainer, and consultant. His 1996 book, Getting into Your Customer's Head , helped redefine how salespeople approach selling. Contact Kevin at www.toplineleadership.com
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Introduction
Years ago I was selling an office equipment solution to the CEO
of a 100-person company. I was selling to him the way I had
been taught: I established comfortable conversation while
building trust, asked questions to diagnose his needs, then presented
my solution as an answer to his needs. Everything appeared
to be going along as planned. Suddenly he leaned forward and
asked, "Aren't you going to close me now??
Why is it that customers know more about selling techniques
than most salespeople know about buying behavior? That's not
right. An understanding of buying is where selling should start.
We need to redefine "selling? to mean helping people buy.
What might "helping people buy? actually mean? The HR Chally
Group, founded in 1973 through a grant from the United States Justice
Department to create validated assessments that accurately predict
on-the-job effectiveness—including sales performance, has a lot
to say. For their most recent report Chally interviewed over 2,500 customers
who provided opinions about more than 4,000 salespeople.
The results appear in The Chally World Class Sales Excellence Research Report.
Among their findings was that "customers usually award the
prize to the salesperson who has been there through every step of
their buying process, meeting customer need after customer need by
presenting the right information at the right time. To win a sale, then,
a salesperson's sales process must match perfectly with the customer's
buying process. The two should be mirror images.?1
We can take a lesson as well from Dr. Steven Covey's classic
book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. (I'd bet many of you have a
copy on your bookshelf right now.) Dr. Covey says, "We have such a
tendency to rush in, to fix things up with good advice. But we often
fail to take the time to diagnose, to really, deeply understand the
problem first.?2
This rushing in and "fixing things up with good advice? occurs
a lot in our profession because we have been conditioned to see
things through a salesperson's eyes, and our sales behaviors are
based on these perceptions. But your buyers have a different frame
of reference. They have their own point of view.
So let me ask you, when selling, do you think as much about the
customer's buying process as you do about your sales process? Are
you with your customers "through every step of their buying
process??
If not, it's not your fault. Despite the evidence before us that a
new sales paradigm is needed, few sales books or training courses
teach salespeople how to deeply understand the purchasing decision
from their customers' perspective, how to adapt their selling
behavior to customers' buying behavior. If you don't think about
the buying process on every call, you can get out of sync with your
customer, and that can lead to lost sales.
That's why I wrote this book, to demonstrate the why and the
how of getting in sync with your customer's buying process. When
you do that, you realize that you need to slow down each conversation
you have with a customer so you can ask more questions, and
help the customer do a better job of buying. When you slow down
your selling, you can help customers move more quickly through
each step of their buying process. Hence the paradoxical title of this
book: Slow Down, Sell Faster!
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Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I UNDERSTANDING BUYING IS WHERE SELLING
SHOULD START
Chapter 1 Why Slower Is Faster: How Selling Too Fast Results in
Lost Sales and a Longer Buying Process
How Selling Too Fast Causes Lost Sales
Shifting from Selling- to Buying-Focused
The Eight Steps in the Customer's Buying Process
Six Mysteries of Selling Solved
The Eight Sales Roles That Match the Buying Process
Slow Down and Get in Sync!
Chapter 2 Mastering the Politics of Selling to Multiple
Decision Makers
The Players on a Complex Buying Team
Configurations of a Complex Buying Team
A Case Study in Complex Buyinnamics
How to Avoid the Biggest Mistakes
Looking Ahead
Chapter 3 Winning the Complex Sale
The Questions You Can't Afford Not to Ask
Fundamental Skills to Master
When in the Buying Process to Reach Each Decision Maker
Sharpening Your Political Skills
Winning Over 0a Complex Buying Team Takes Skill
PART II THE EIGHT ROLES OF BUYING-FOCUSED SELLING
Prologue to Part II
How to Get Started with the Eight Sales Roles
Focus on Obtaining Go-Forward Commitments
Getting Started
Chapter 4 The Student: Use Knowledge to Gain an Edge
Study Your Customer
Customer Step 1: Change
How a Student Gains a Deeper Understanding of Your
Customer's Business
Know Three Things about Each Customer That Other
Salespeople Won't Know
Understanding the Company's Decision-Making Hierarchy 66
Put Your Knowledge to Work
Milestone #1: Getting More First Appointments
The Goal: A Twenty-Minute Appointment
A Telephone Approach That Gets Results
Preparing for the First Appointment
Chapter 5 The Doctor: Diagnose Small Problems, Define Big Needs
Uncovering Needs to Establish the Value of Your Solution
Customer Step 2: Discontent
Types of "Patients? You Will Meet
How the Doctor Intensifies the Prospect's Need for Change
The Five Steps of Diagnosis
Handling the "Ballpark Price? Questions
Identify then Intensify Discontent
Milestone #2: Accelerating Momentum with a
Memo of Understanding (MOU)
Why MOUs Areitical
Sample MOU
Chapter 6 The Architect: Design Customer-Focused Solutions
Orienting on the Buying Process
Customer Step 3: Research
The Customer's Process for Developing a Solution
Understanding Customer Buying Criteria
The Dynamics of Customer Buying Criteria
How an Architect Designs Unique Solutions
Identify Your Differentiators (Do a Market Assessment)
The Architect's Toolkit: How to Understand and Influence
Buying Criteria
Creating a Better Match Between Criteria and Capabilities
Create a Unique Solution to Match Customer Needs
Chapter 7 The Coach: Make a Plan to Defeat the Competition
Evaluating Your Starting Position
Customer Step 4: Comparison
How a Coach Develops a Winning Game Plan
Scouting the Competition
Five Winning Strategies
Become a Stronger Competitor
Milestone #3: Winning Proposals and Presentations
Developing a Convincing Proposal
Presentations: Preparation Will Meet Opportunity
Be Sure to Maintain Communication
Chapter 8 The Therapist: Understand and Resolve a Buyer's Fears
Customer Step 5: Fear
Why Fear Happens
How a Therapist Resolves Buying Fears
Important Skills of a Therapist
Fear May Not be the Only Hurdle
Resolving Your Own Fears
Help Customers Move Past Fear
Chapter 9 The Negotiator: Reaching a Mutual Commitment
Customer Step 6: Commitment
How a Negotiator Creates Win-Win
Preparing to Negotiate
Handling the Most Common Customer Negotiating Tactics
When the Negotiation Really Begins
Negotiate to a Win-Win Agreement
Milestone #4: Transitioning from Pre- to Post-Sale
Do You Keep or Hand Off Implementation?
Drafting an Implementation Plan
Minimizing Customer Risk
Chapter 10 The Teacher: Teach Customers to Achieve
Maximum Value
Customer Step 7: Expectations of Value
Lessons from the Learning Curve
How an Effective Teacher Instructs Customers:
The Four Steps of Customer Education
Teaching Benefits You, the Teacher
Exceed Your Customers' Expectations
Chapter 11 The Farmer: Cultivate Customer Satisfaction
and Loyalty
The Key to Customer Satisfaction
Customer Step 8: Satisfaction
How a Farmer Cultivates Customer Loyalty
Four Keys to Sales Farming
The Three Levels of Customer Relationships
When and How to Develop a Strategic Partnership
Getting More Referrals and Testimonials
Your Final Role: Chief Satisfaction Officer
Epilogue to Part II
PART III COACHING THE EIGHT SALES ROLES
Chapter 12 Coaching for Success: Advice foro Work for Them)
What Is Coaching?
How to Improve Your Sales Coaching
Getting the Most Value Out of Each Milestone
Coaching the Sales Roles
Your Mission: Create a Great Sales Team
Endnotes
Index
About the Author
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