Whether you’re in sales, manage salespeople, or are in a leadership role at your business there will come a time when you’ll want to dazzle a prospect with your industry and technical knowledge. DON’T DO THAT!
Your prospect cares about how your product, service, or solution will make their life better – how it will solve their problem(s), not about how it works. Watch my video for more details.
What do you think? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!
Transcript
Hi, today I want to talk to you about painting seagulls in your buyer’s picture, or more commonly, don’t get too technical with your selling.
Hi, I’m Jonathan with Valorous Circle, and today I want to talk to you about a sales tip. Yeah, we normally talk about sales marketing and leadership, but part of that falls into your sales team. And this tip is about a problem that so many of us fall into, myself included on occasion. When we become experts at what we do, we often, very candidly, want to spend too much time talking to our customers about the technical part of what we’re doing. And it’s a huge mistake that costs you time, money, and most importantly, new sales.
Why? Well, it’s really simple. You’ve become an expert in your field and you love the technology, you love the specifics, you love all of the industry jargon. But, unfortunately, I’m going to tell you most of your customers simply don’t care. They want a solution to their problems, but they don’t want to know the technical details.
Let me give you an example. Imagine you went out to buy a brand new car, and when you went to buy that car, obviously there are some basics you’re going to expect. You expect the car to run, so you’re not going to ask any questions about that. You expect the engine to work and the transmission to work and the wheels to go round and the steering wheel to work and all of those things, which are amazing marvels of technology, you just expect them to work. Why? Well, you’re buying a vehicle, and that’s what happens.
So you might be interested in the color of the seats or the color of the paint on the exterior, but do you really care that much about exactly how that paint is applied? Do you care about how the sheet metal starts off with an electrical charge and how it’s coated or whether it’s spray painted or not?
Now, I admit I don’t know anything about painting cars, but the point is when you’re going to buy that vehicle, you may care about the color of the car because of what it means to you, in your life. You may care about the color of the seats and whether they’re leather or cloth. But you probably don’t care about what cows and the diet those cows had and the state they were raised in that gave their lives for the leather you’re going to sit on. You just want to make sure it’s good leather. And that’s understandable.
So apply this over to your business. When you’re trying to sell to your customers, do you spend too much time talking about technical details that they’re not interested in? I challenge that many of us do.
Now, I’m not saying that if a customer has questions, we shouldn’t answer them. Absolutely, if a customer asks questions that are technical or industry-specific, absolutely, go ahead and answer those. But don’t assume your customer wants to know, because in most cases, candidly, they don’t. Your customer is coming to you with a problem; a problem they want fixed or want a solution for. Your prospect is experiencing pain of some sort and they’re looking to get out of that pain. You, in the sales journey, need to help them get out of that pain, and do so by pointing out how your product, your service, your solution helps them solve their problem. How it’s going to make their life better, not about the details of the specifics in the technical or the industry stuff. It doesn’t matter. If it does matter, they’ll ask, and you’ll tell them.
But I’m going to challenge you, if you would stop selling technical terms, you stop talking about all of the engineering specifics, the vast majority of your customers are never going to ask you for those details. Why? Because they’re buying from you and they trust you, and if you tell them, after understanding what their pain is, that your solution is going to solve that pain, and maybe demonstrate to them how their life is going to be better with your product or service, they’re not going to care a whole lot about the specifics at that point.
So I challenge you this week: go out, and instead of selling specifics, instead of selling technical details, talk to your customers about their pain, and how your product, your service, or your solution is going to make their life better, and leave off all of the technical details.
Good selling and make it a great day.
