As a seller, do you want to slow down your sales process? Making your sales cycle longer than it currently is sounds crazy doesn’t it?
What can happen if you slow down your sales process? Well, the prospect could change their mind if they’re thinking about buying; they could get a better offer from one of your competitors; their needs could change, leaving you out in the cold; the economy could change, leaving them without the ability to buy; in fact, all kinds of bad things could happen.
But on the other hand, according to Kevin Davis in Slow Down, Sell Faster! Understand Your Customer’s Buying Process and Maximize Your Sales (AMACOM: 2011), if you slow down your selling process you could actually end up selling faster than when you were trying to sell as fast as possible.
So, riddle me this: how can doing something slower actually be faster?
Davis argues that the secret to selling faster by selling slower is moving from a sales oriented process to a buyer oriented process, that is, from trying to sell based on your sales process to trying to help your prospect buy based on their buying process.
The crux of Slow Down, Sell Faster is understanding and developing the skills of the 8 roles of buying-focused selling. The process of buying-focused selling involves working with the prospect to help lead them through their natural buying process, and to do so salespeople have to work through each of the 8 roles that come into play as the buyer works through their buying process.
The 8 roles of buying-focused selling:
- 1. The Student: understanding the customer, their company, and how your products or services can fit.
- 2. The Doctor: diagnosing the real needs of the customer
- 3. The Architect: designing customer-focused solutions
- 4. The Coach: analyze the competition and develop a game plan to win the sale
- 5. The Therapist: understand and resolve the buyer’s fears
- 6. The Negotiator: reaching mutual commitment
- 7. The Teacher: teaching your customer how to maximize value from your solution
- 8. The Farmer: cultivate customer satisfaction and loyalty
By slowing down your sales process and engaging the prospect using a process that matches their buying process you can, according to Davis, end up closing sales much quicker.
And the argument makes sense.
Most of us have spent our sales careers trying to force our prospects to do what we want by demanding they conform to the way we sell—but when we buy for ourselves or our companies, we typically resist the efforts of the person trying to sell us until we are satisfied we’re making the right choice and have worked through our fears and concerns. Most of us will ignore the entreaties of the salesperson and make our decisions our way and on our timeframe.
If that is the way we buy, why would we think others aren’t doing exactly the same thing? If they are, doesn’t it make sense to help them work through their process instead of trying to force our process on them?
It’s time to move away from trying to force prospects to buy our way and to begin helping them buy their way. Get a copy of Slow Down, Sell Faster and begin to speed up the flow in your pipeline.
