6 ways to sell to your customers without hard-selling
There’s nothing worse than ‘salesy-people’. You know the ones… they’re only interested in getting the cash out of your wallet and, if they get even a whiff that you won’t be buying today, then you lose their attention completely.
Do you have staff that fit this mould? If you do, the good news is, being salesy is often just poor sales skills. And sales skills can be improved!
Here are 6 simple solutions to gently promote your offering to your customers, without pushing them away or losing their trust. And, believe it or not, following these steps can actually make it an enjoyable process for all!
1. Build rapport first: start by having a real conversation. Your customers are human after all, they want to know that you care – first impressions are key in building great, lasting relationships. Don’t automatically fire off questions about what they need from you, ask them how their day is going instead.
2. Ask open ended questions: when you do get down to what it is they’re after, make sure your questions are open ended and encourage the customer to talk. Put it this way… if someone walks into a store and the shopkeeper says, ‘hi, can I help you?’ If the customer says no, then your only choice is to step back and wait to see if they come to you with questions.
3. Listen: when you do ask questions, genuinely listen to their response. It seems obvious, but you’d be surprised how uncommon listening can be. If you listen to understand, you can better help your customers to solve their problem.
4. Sell the benefits, not the features: while product features are important, 99% of the time, the customer will already know what the product does. But they won’t necessarily know how it will make them feel. Here’s an example if a customer was looking to purchase a new lounge.
Selling the features: “Well it seats 5 people and is made from a synthetic material that makes it easy to clean. It is four meters long and two meters wide…”
Selling the benefits: “Oh this is the most comfortable couch in our range, here have a seat and make yourself at home. I tell you what, if you come home after a long day at work and throw yourself onto this lounge, you’ll never want to get up. It’ll have you relaxed and snoozing in minutes.”
So, which would you buy?
5. Use stories: this is really another example of selling the benefits of a product or service, over the features. Use stories such as other customers experiences to help sell the product; share with your prospective customer how the product changed someone’s life, solved a problem or made them feel like a million bucks!
6. Remove the pressure: while we all set sales targets and need to make a dollar to live, just because someone doesn’t buy from you now, doesn’t mean they won’t buy from you later. If you provide them with a great sales experience, regardless of the outcome, they are more likely to remember you, refer you and promote you; the three golden tickets when building lifelong customers!