Forget the ‘ABC of Selling’

The role of a British sales-person isn’t to ‘sell’ in the American sense. If you want to sell to British customers (and other customers who have somehow acquired the famous British reserve), you have to do something different.

You have to make your potential customers want to buy.

You have to create demand!

The ‘ABCD’ of selling!

No it doesn’t stand for, Always Be Closing… Don’t! My ABCD stands for Always Be Creating DEMAND.

You can call it Desire, if you like. I often do. Either way we are talking about keeping the emphasis on creating a proposition that is shaped around what the customer wants. In our job we are contacting, networking, following up, and our aim is never to concentrate on the close: our challenge is to create demand for what we offer.

Everything we say and do should ensure we increase the amount of desire the customer has to do business with us, so much so I believe we can safely say, “It is not our job to SELL, it is our job to make customers want to buy from us!” Call it facilitating the buying process if you like.

Once that’s done, closing is the easiest part of the job. In fact, if you create enough demand, you don’t ever need to close. The client or customer doesn’t need to be “closed on”. Like an expertly created meal, when it’s done, it’s done. No further work required.

So, how do we create demand?

Well to start with, we have to put our customers, potential and existing, FIRST!

Yeah, I know. Radical eh?

We find out:

• Exactly what they are trying to do and what challenges they face
• What will help them to achieve their goals
• What their customers are demanding of them
• How we can potentially help them achieve their goals
• What doubts they may have about committing to the transaction
• Why it’s in their interests to deal with us, not our competitors.
• In fact we have to find out as much as we can about any sales opportunity

The key to achieving this is differentiation. We have to differentiate ourselves from our competitors by gaining a better appreciation of the customer’s precise requirements; if we do this well we can shape our proposition, to fit their expectations. By doing this better than our competitors we will offer a more compelling proposition and we will create more demand. The more demand we create for the proposition the more we make the customer want what we can provide rather than what our competitors offer.

If you can master the art of creating desire or demand, closing the sale is not difficult.

And if you want a route map for how to create demand to buy, how about another mnemonic list:

• Attitude
• Background research
• Curiosity (questioning skills)
• Defence against objections

Over the coming chapters, we will discover what each of these really mean but just to whet your appetite consider this:
Without genuine curiosity and innovative questioning skills, you can’t build background. Without background you can’t create demand. Until you create demand you have not created any differentiation. Without differentiation you face an uphill struggle to overcome objections, which will have a negative impact on your attitude. Without attitude you will lose heart before you master your ABCD… and so it goes on.

This is why you should consider following my ABCD. If you do I promise you the road to successful selling will be a lot less challenging and a lot more enjoyable, not to mention rewarding!