364 Do We Really Understand Client’s Needs In Sales?

<p>Understanding client’s needs presumes we care about what they want.  For many salespeople this isn’t even a topic in their mind.  Their understanding is that they turn up and tell the client all about their widget in microscopic detail and somehow the client will buy once they have all of that data.  Now this approach may work with certain analytic personality types and certain professions, but it is still a sporadic approach with a low success rate.  How do we know that what we are showing them will resonate with what they need?</p> <p> I was interested in a certain solution and asked the President to send someone to me to explain more about it, after hearing his presentation.  The Sales Manager for the firm came to see me.  He didn’t ask me a single question, but went straight into a prepared slide presentation with about sixty slides.  Japanese all look so young, but I guess he was in his forties, so he was not some green kid.  He had been doing this sales approach for his whole career, over the last twenty years, I would guess.</p> <p> Here is the problem with the spray and pray angle in sales.  There were two slides out of the sixty, which I judged were interesting.  He had wasted his time showing me 58 that were useless because he didn’t ask me what I wanted.  If he had known, he could have gone straight to those two and we could have spent all of our time digging into how they would help me grow my business.  Instead, he got nothing and left empty-handed.</p> <p> Presuming we are salespeople who are professionals and so ask questions, are we sure we are finding out what we need to know?  Our primary task is to draw an early conclusion concern<span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU">ing</span> whether or not we have what the buyer needs. If not, then we <span lang= "EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU">should</span> waste no more time and we <span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU">should</span> go find someone we can serve.  If we can help them, then we need more detail to work out exactly how we can assist.  We ask questions