Recent buyer research suggests that in the very best performing sales companies the instances of accurately targeting prospects and successfully introducing new products are as little as 50% effective. So, in the very best sales companies these key sales skills are completed only half as well as they could be. We think this is down to a lack of focus on meeting clients’ needs.
Let’s look at what could cause great sales companies to make such basic errors:
- When thinking of prospects we tend to think of the needs of our own business rather than that of our prospects. That is, we think of the increased sales that the prospect might bring, or how we might manage the prospect when they become a customer, or other internal factors relating to our own business.
- Likewise when launching a new product we tend to think of how we will deliver the product and what difference it will make to our own business rather than what it might do for our customers. It’s the mentality of ‘we will build it and they will come’. Well, they might not!
Yes we have to be able to manage increased business and we have to deliver new products effectively, but the overriding concern must be your customer or prospect. Are you delivering appropriate products and solutions to meet real needs? You can have the best products in the world but if they’re not targeted to meet real needs you’re wasting your time.
So get out of your offices and talk to your customers, it’s about meeting their needs, not yours!