Dealing with the forces of price (or discounting) and commoditisation appear to be the two most pressing issues on the agendas of Australian Sales Directors and Sales Managers. There is little surprise in this when you consider the point at which many salespeople engage a potential customer during the customer’s buying process.

Consider the Buyers Cycle

Typically, most sales teams who struggle with price and commoditisation invest significant time engaging with clients in the Evaluation of Options stage. Engaging clients when they enter the evaluation of options phase makes sense as the client has committed to a purchase decision and budget has typically been assigned to the purchase. However, there are a number of downsides to this approach, particularly when you are in a competitive or price-sensitive market.

Huthwaite’s study of world class salespeople has identified a number of highly successful sellers who consistently overcome pricing and commoditisation,even when they offer very similar products and services to their competitors. What was common to each of these sales people was their ability to create value (that the client was prepared to pay for) that was independent of the seller’s products or services.

Creating value for your clients can often be as much about when you engage them as it is about what you do. The general rule here is: the earlier in the client’s buying cycle (or process) that you can engage them, the better. Typically the best times to create value for your clients are in the Changes over Time and Recognition of Needs phases.

Engaging clients before they have an explicit need for your product or service creates many opportunities for your sales team to engage their customers in a deep diagnostic discussion around the size and severity of their issues and challenges. It also gives your sales people greater freedom and time to help their clients mould the purchase decision criteria and define what ‘value’ will mean in this purchase.

For sales people who are engaging their clients in the early stages of the customer’s buying cycle the challenge then focuses on the best way to secure meetings with clients who may not realise they have the problems, issues and challenges that your products can solve.

On a final note for Sales Managers, one of the greatest investments of your time is the coaching of your sales team towards more effective consultative selling skills and behaviours. In helping your team to better deal with pricing and commoditisation we recommend that you allocate more of your time to coaching your sales people in opportunities earlier in the pipeline or the customer’s buying cycle.

[More James Fennessy Articles]

James Fennessy is the Managing Director of Huthwaite Asia Pacific. Huthwaite, the creators of SPIN Selling®, are world leaders in sales performance research and improvement.

To learn more about the strategies successful salespeople use to create value please download Huthwaite’s white paper on “Escaping the Price-Driven Sale”.

To learn more about the strategies and skills successful sales people use to engage clients in early stages of the buying cycle, please download Huthwaite’s white paper on “Prospecting for the Major Sale”.

Phone : +61 (3) 8606 4901

Email : jfennessy@huthwaite.com.au

Website : www.huthwaite.com.au