Reframing the Concept of Selling

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CustomerCentric Selling is strongly based on the idea of reframing the concept of selling. What does this mean? Think about this: when a salesperson enters the room to meet a customer, he can either think in the way of a traditional pushy salesperson:

What can I sell to this customer?

or he can go in with the thought:

Let’s find out if this customer has goal, problem or need I could help him with!

Reframing the concept of selling simply means a shift between these two approaches – from traditionally annoying, artificial one-way presentation of the seller’s product to a genuine, two-way conversation about the customer’s situation, goals, problems and needs.

Why Is Reframing the Concept of Selling Beneficial?

If you think about it more thoroughly, despite its simplicity, this shift also means a fundamental change in the mind-set of the seller. When we make this change in our approach to selling within our organisation, we immediately gain these benefits:

  • The idea of selling – which to many (non-sales) people has been something horrifying or downright despicable – suddenly becomes palatable to a lot of people who in fact never see themselves as salespeople
  • It allows a lot of subject matter experts become successful in selling by doing what the like to do naturally – help their customers achieve goals and solve problems.
  • The seller-customer relationship will become more productive and rewarding for both parties as there is a genuine effort to reach win-win situation.

What Does This Mean to Salespeople?

If you are a sales person who believes that selling is mainly persuading, handling objections, convincing and closing, you might be in trouble – especially if you have difficulties in changing your approach and bad habits.

Then again, if you like helping people, are not afraid of approaching strange people and know how to use your company’s offering – never mind if you are currently working as a sales person or not – you have good potential to become a great sales person.

How to Put This Shift into Practice?

CustomerCentric Selling approach has a set of core concepts – all of 13 of them – which collectively enable us to start puttijng the idea of reframing the concept of selling in into practice. These core concepts are:

  1. You Get Delegated to the People You Sound Like
  2. Take the Time to Diagnose before You Offer a Prescription
  3. People Buy from People Who Are Sincere and Competent and Who Empower Them
  4. Don’t Give without Getting
  5. You Can’t Sell to Someone Who Can’t Buy
  6. Bad News Early Is Good News
  7. No Goal Means No Prospect
  8. People Are Best Convinced by Reasons They Themselves Discover
  9. When Selling, Your Expertise Can Become Your Enemy
  10. The Only Person Who Can Call It a Solution Is the Buyer
  11. Make Yourself Equal, Then Make Yourself Different—or You’ll Just Be Different
  12. Emotional Decisions Are Justified by Value and Logic
  13. Don’t Close before the Buyer Is Ready to Buy

We will be drilling down into some of these concepts in posts to come. Until then, good selling!

Source: CustomerCentric Selling, Second Edition by Michael T. Bosworth, John R. Holland, Frank Visgatis, McGraw-Hill 2009

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