How to deal with customers in sales

Some people say, do sales is very simple, you only need to use two good "water" on the line, one is the drink, one is the bath water. The first one is the water, and the other one is the bath water. In other words, you only need to pour the customer on the table, or take the customer to the sauna, basically to get the customer done. Is that really the case?

I don't deny that some small lists, or in the past era, can indeed be used in this way to get it done, but if it's some of the big lists that can easily be millions, tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars? If the person in charge of the other party is not a person, but a team of more than a dozen people? If the person in charge of the other side of the project is a million dollars a year, the president? Do you think he will be moved by this small profit?

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is an important theory in Western management. He divided human needs into five levels, respectively: physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, respect needs and self-actualization needs. So how do we profile our customers when we are dealing with them?

You need to figure out your customer, what stage of his needs? If his physiological needs, such as eating, drinking and playing these, have been met, then, you then ask him to eat, take a bath, these not only can not impress him, but also incur his resentment, especially now, some units and even the provisions of: with the customer dinner can not be more than 300 yuan per meal, and can not accept gifts with brand-name logos. But can't we do it without giving gifts to users?

To give you an example. One of my classmates, is to do software development, he usually like to play badminton, once, with him paired with an elderly teammate, this teammate think he played well, after the next game to chat with him, through the conversation that the other side of a famous university in their city, the president of the 59 years old this year, next year will be retired, and now want to think of whether you can do a little bit of contribution to the school again before retirement.

He felt that this is an opportunity for him, he introduced himself to the principal that his company is doing software development, hoping to do a set of "smart campus" system for their university, the principal was very interested in listening to, and would like to let them try to do, in the process of doing so, they have been maintaining good interaction, he found that the principal simply did not mean to ask for a bribe. He found that the principal had no intention of asking for bribes, but kept emphasizing how to do a good job on the project, how to help the university enhance the process of informatization through this project, and how to bring real benefits to the students on campus.

These demands of the president alone indicate that he values reputation and contribution to the university. In terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, he is at a high level of the pyramid. After figuring out the other side of the psychology, my classmates in the process of chatting, as much as possible to lean in this direction, catering to the principal's "self-actualization needs" after a few conversations, the principal felt very satisfied, and finally, they successfully signed the order.

This tells us: not all the party, are the lowest level of physiological needs, many of the party's senior actually has a higher level of demand, which belongs to the self-actualization of the demand, you have to learn to insight, differentiate between this demand, and then meet it. If you do not realize this, a mistake to meet the low-level needs of the party, not only can not get the order, but also to the other party left a very bad impression, it is likely that even the opportunity to cooperate in the future are gone.

What mistakes new salesmen make

1, expose themselves. New salesman often in order to get close to the customer, or to show that they have a relationship in the customer's business, in the customer's business, often say that I was introduced to who who, I'm very familiar with a certain leader and other topics, in fact, in the event that you are not sure which faction of your customers in the A side of the premise, it is best not to easily expose themselves, do not go around to say that you that relationship in the event of his competitors, or with him there have been The person who has a problem, do not mention okay, mention the project is out of the question.

2, impatient. Many new salesmen in the first encounter with the customer after listening to the customer said a few words, began to go back to the company to do the program, do PPT, as a result, you a meal after the preparation, found that the customer's needs suddenly changed, before the work of all the white. The correct approach is: you should be in the customer raised the ` surface demand outside, study why it has this demand, why will be at this time to put forward such a demand, I hope how to solve this problem. Only through the phenomenon to see the essence, will not let us go in the wrong direction.

At this point, you will find: the more you know, the more favorable to you to close the deal. Experienced old salesman, all the talk about business as a number of chatting process, a variety of pre-side chat, chat to the end, he also know you, also trust, turnover has become a matter of course.

Sources of customer information

To go to a company to run business, grasp the customer's information is the first step to do, then how to grasp the customer's information? Some salesmen will say, "We will set up some questions to be answered by the customer when we visit them." There are also salesmen who will say, "Before going to visit customers, I will look at their company's website." In fact, these practices are wrong, these channels to get the information, are written for outsiders to see the official documents, you get from this aspect of the information is also very superficial, or you do not get the key valuable information, so where does the valuable information come from?

1, the last sales. You should know the most important channel, is your company's last management of this customer's sales, you should ask him: this customer previously worked with our company how? What he appreciated about our company? What are his grievances? This customer has what personal preferences, so that in your first visit, it is easier to find *** with the topic.

2, circle. You need to enter some industry contacts circle, in a small circle, many people will tell you that company, or some of the information of the customer, for example: you are selling medical equipment, you can enter the local medical circle, if you come across the circle of sales of medicines, it is very likely that your PR customers are the same person, in this case, you just need to ask him to ask for advice, it may be From where he inquired about the customer's key information, if the relationship is good, he will even be willing to introduce you to that customer, which is you in the circle encountered a valuable person.

3, a small insider. Start contact with a project, you must not see each other within the company's leadership or directly responsible, at this time, you need to start from the other side of the company's small staff, he may be a small salesman, may also be a small clerk within the company, you ask him out to eat a meal together, and slowly mixed with him after he became familiar with him to train him into your small insider, you can learn about the intricacies of this project to his internal You can learn from him about the intricate relationship of interests within the project, such as: who is the patron of this project? What are the specific requirements of the senior leadership for this project? Who will set up obstacles for us in this project? What do we need to do to minimize detours on this project?

Encroachment

A high school friend of mine is a salesperson for a Fortune 500 company. Their company is to do medical equipment, he went to a county hospital one year to run the business, found that the county hospital testing equipment, 90% of their competitors, it is clear that competitors have been in the market for many years of deep plowing, if they want to enter the market, the difficulty is quite large. But the market can not be difficult to give up, they decided to try to see if they can find a breakthrough, they were using the cannibalization strategy.

They investigated and found that the competitor's main relationship is in the hospital's radiology department, other departments such as gynecology, is the competitor's relationship is weak. At this time, the hospital's gynecology department is just ready to purchase a color ultrasound machine, this project is not big, my classmates they focus on through the attack, and finally made this small single. Since the hospital bought this ultrasound machine, found that their company's equipment is not only inexpensive, and the failure rate is extremely low, the equipment rarely need to repair, since then, a lot of large orders to a steady stream of their company.

However, in this process, we have to find two breakthroughs:

1, breakthroughs from the human point of view. You have to pay attention to observe and see if there is anyone within the Party A is not satisfied with your competitors? Why is he dissatisfied? Will he help us because of this dissatisfaction, and thus help us? How are we going to build on this, expanding this dissatisfaction with him, thus allowing him to increase support for our efforts?

2, engaged in the perspective of the breakthrough. You have to stand in the Party's point of view, there is no better solution than the competitors to meet the needs of customers? And the benefits of this solution, is it difficult for customers to resist?

"Cannibalization strategy" tells us: in the competitors are in the advantage of the market, you do not come up with them in the big project to grab resources, you can pretend to be a pig to eat a tiger, from a small project is not too attractive to start, and gradually penetrate, and slowly build up the relationship between you and the customer, you put the small project service, the party will naturally be impressed with you, and you will be a good service. You will naturally be impressed by you, and slowly give you bigger orders and opportunities.

"Anti-cannibalization" strategy

Doing sales, but also often encounter competitors to cannibalize our customers. In this case, you must know how to watch your home base, do not give competitors to take advantage of the opportunity.

An example. Once, my classmate went to a county hospital to do the old customer return visit, the dean of this hospital is his old customer. After he passed, the dean said to him: I'm afraid that this order will not be able to give your company, I hope you can understand my pain. Because there are always some people ask me why I buy your company's equipment for more than ten years in a row.

What to do? Originally a good cooperation with the old customers, turn to the competitors will be defected, and, perhaps since then, they have lost a big customer, is really to give up?

My classmate is doing this: he led the hospital leadership to another big city's three hospitals to do an academic visit, the hospital is also their company to provide equipment, at the same time, he used the hands of the relationship between the two hospitals will be some of the departments into a business mutual assistance fellowship section, and then every year will be organized by the two hospitals in academic exchanges, the cost of the company reimbursement.

This gives the director of the county hospital a good reason and evidence: you see, the big cities of the three hospitals are purchasing this equipment, our hospitals if we also purchase this equipment, we will be able to maintain a first-class level of hardware, which is for the hospital's business development considerations.

This tells us: you have to put yourself in the shoes of the person in charge of the party in charge of the encounter competitors PR, to cannibalize our business, we first have to first calm down, after all, we have been working with the customer for many years, and each other have established trust, we have a first-mover advantage, based on which we only need to provide to the party to continue to choose one of our reasons will be enough.

Establishment of standards

Now many industries, homogenization competition is more serious, the price of many products have been transparent, in this case, in order to obtain more profits, and competitors to make some differences, you have to establish a set of standards to build up their own advantages, in the establishment of standards, we need to Pay attention to the following three points:

1, must be an old customer. You want to help customers to establish standards, then the premise is that he must be your old customers, and in the previous cooperation, each other has established trust, if he has not cooperated with you before, then, even if you want to let the customer use your standards, he is unlikely to trust you, or he will let you to adapt to their previous standards, it is unlikely that the standards will be modified for you.

2. Start with the customer's needs. Do not feel that what you have, you have to let the customer to accept what, it is easy to make the customer resentment, to stand in the customer's point of view, it is best to all the models, parameters, can be changed to what the customer needs, so as to let the customer feel that your company values each other, and can also be used to block out your competitors.

3, in line with their own advantages. We must understand what the purpose of the establishment of standards, in fact, in order to set up a threshold, to establish the advantages of meeting their own, so that when the customer procurement, there can be a lot of exclusivity conditions, so we establish the standards must be consistent with their own strengths and weaknesses against competitors, do not allow competitors to easily be able to achieve these standards, to allow themselves to always be in a leading position; and in the customer to achieve with the *** knowledge, you must be customers to write these standards into the bid, so that in the future bidding, so that they are invincible.