Selling For People Who Hate Selling.
Shock, horror: I’m not getting my hands dirty.Following a five decade award-winning track record in marketing, sales and management & interim management, very little ever came as a surprise but what was shocking was a firm’s inability to sell successfully. It’s not as if there aren’t strategies to sell more effectively. Some were just were plain unaware of this flaw in their plans. It’s almost as if ‘our product is so good it’ll sell itself’.
This condition was and is apparent in small firms and PLCs alike. It’s a massive problem that all manner of coaches, trainers, managers and ‘gurus’ have tried to fix and failed. They usually advocate more and more, intensive, harder hitting training.
It is the core topic in this book and that is supplemented by a business marketing plan. And this informs much of the insight into the Exchange of Value process. If this situation exists in your business, take heart. There may be a more effective solution to ‘selling’.
The lost revenue because of it is shocking. Buying signals written into meetings, messages, phone discussions and feedback, and all that was needed was a question: would you like to go ahead? You’re entitled to sell your product.
However, it can be addressed and the shortfall recovered. What you will notice in this book is the combination of easy-to-follow tools and conditions that, combined, will open the concept of value and the exchange process behind it.
This ‘fix’ originated in the mid-90s by reviewing deals won and deals lost. What had happened between a buyer and a vendor? It didn’t matter the nature or size of a deal. It happens in every single sale. And it can be exposed by examining the interplay between the seller and the buyer.
The Solution: Watching The Stages of an Exchange of Value:
Through these observations, audits and reviews, we have enabled, using a series of existing tools and techniques, a physical map that highlights a customer or prospect’s purchase story from start to finish. Or journey if you’re ‘woke’.
The map shows exactly where a prospect is seeking an exchange of value. We project the type of value exchange according to the stage in their story. Our exchange starts with Inherent Value (the simple relating of product features). We move to Added Value because we’re applying tools now so that we tease out the advantages of our inherent value. We start exploring the advantages of our possible solutions.
We then try to position the genuine start of beneficial value: potentially a form of Customised Value. We’re now moving towards Superior Value: the concentrating of added and custom value that presents Superior Value. Superior Value is what people buy.
The prospect or customer is seeking such an exchange at most junctures in that story map. They’ve found you, or vice versa and their interactions are providing interest and confirmation: these are their exchanges. Yours for theirs.
It’s this set of observations that create the Exchange framework and because of its structure relying on simple observations, that removes the threat of having to use unsavoury practices. It’s simply professional observation.
The terror of selling. For many it’s real.
It happens. Frequently. Everyday and everywhere. People hate selling. Of course, there are people who love the thrill of the chase; closing deals day-in-day-out. Managers encouraging the beating of chests when a deal is done or close at hand. Indeed, the discipline has been hijacked by devious adherents, scam merchants, tricksters and simple unethical sharp practice. It’s not surprising thousands of people shy away from being painted with the same brush because they're being seen to sell.
In order to make firms more effective, we’ve developed a radical new way to ‘participate and manage’ the sales cycle. The process allows people to step sideways but still have, in some cases, a better view of the transaction from start to finish. More importantly, it has been developed using existing tools, techniques, styles, and logic so that an exchange of value becomes a relatively transparent window looking at a sale in progress. It means that, in affect, there’s a way to close the loop.
Whats Up Docs is providing an effective route to a marketing plan and the necessary handling of the sales cycle.
WHO ARE WE?
Your Edge. Find it: Use it.
A 48 year veteran and Xerox rookie to rescues & turn arounds, a career primarily in technologies and related services. From billion £/$ household names to start ups: a number of business problems have continually tripped up owners and senior management alike: value concepts, smart selling and raising money from lending sources. Remarkably, these problems affect small, medium and large corporate firms. Fixing them requires money. Getting money means being coherent. Utterly.
What are you buying?
Because we provide a ‘no selling framework’, we have to plan more effectively and with greater application. This is why we’ve built an interactive communications plan to get messages to market and making the gap that exists between prospecting and selling, a little more accessible. People who hate selling will probably hate prospecting too. This is why we must, however, understand our competitive advantage which includes our edge. This is critical to success.
Value Concepts
It’s all there in front of us. But it needs scrutinising and practice to tie it together. Initial Value gets you in the game. But in order to sell successfully, value needs to be exchanged. Value, added value, augmented value and ultimately customised and superior value. Superior value is what people buy. The single biggest problem is failing to recognise where the prospect is in their story. Misunderstand and the deal goes elsewhere.
Smart Selling
Smart selling is where you pull everything under a marketing umbrella and use the Exchange of Value (we’re exchanging value with prospects and customers) technique to pace a sale between you, the vendor and they, the prospect or customer, without recourse to the tired, aggressive cliched old schools of selling. They have their place, provided they are ethical, the Exchange process is gentle yet firm.
We use these processes and others to create a business plan that supports the Exchange of Value framework.