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Value Selling

Written by: Andrew Bryant

Article Overview: What differentiates the amateur from the pro is knowing how to probe for what's really important to the prospet- this article shows you how.

Value Selling

Value Selling

Are you interested selling more or selling more effectively?

If you are still reading I am going to assume that you are and learning about value selling will be important to you.

Values are not solid things that we can see and touch but are made out of the stuff of consciousness and have as much substance as a thought. Despite being so vaporous, values are the most powerful drivers of human behaviour. Values represent what is important to us and yet we may not always be conscious of our values, they can be operating ‘at the back of mind’. Values are unique to each individual and so we need to know how to uncover them.

In this short article I am going to share with you a strategy that will increase your sales dramatically.

As a sales person, you will know how to build rapport and trust with your prospect (if you don’t read my article on ‘connecting with the client’. The following strategy only works when you are in rapport.

To discover the client’s values you need to give yourself permission to use probing question, the first of these sounds like:

“Do you mind if I ask you a question (pause and wait for affirmation) what are your criteria for making this decision?”

This question flushes out the primary level values in regards to you product or service, for instance you are selling a workshop or training and you ask what are your criteria. Your prospect might answer:

“Well it’s important that I get to practice the skills I will learn and I want to know that it fits into my work.”

If you don’t know what they do for a living then you will need to ask this, but what is important to you is that the prospect has given you two of their values about your product. The first value is the importance of practice and the second is that their work is important. Many sales people might just acknowledge these values, but a pro would probe detail. The probe would go something like:

“So it’s important to you to practice what you learn (this is a pacing statement to acknowledge what is important to the prospect), I’m curious, (softening statement) what’s important about that?”

Asking what’s important about what’s important causes the prospect to access their value system and get in touch with what’s driving the potential purpose. In this example the prospect might say something like:

“Well I learn best by doing and I don’t want to waste time on a purely theoretical training.”

With this the prospect has told us that he/she values time and is motivated not to waste it. At this point you might think you have enough information, and you might but if you just ask one more question, such as:

“Ok, so you don’t want to waste time, may I ask what’s important about that?”

And the prospect says:

“Because I want to learn as much as possible to further my career as I’m concerned that promotions are getting competitive.”

Now your prospect had really shared their driving value – promotion in a competitive environment. Whilst you might have sold them with an explanation about how the training would be practical and job applicable, imagine how much more compelling your sales proposition will be when you talk about previous clients who have used the information from the training to get promotions.

So in summary, learn to ask:
1. What are your criteria for making a decision?
2. What’s important about that?
3. And what’s important about that?

Once you know your prospects values around your product and service you can make a persuasive presentation using ‘the three magic words’ – but that’s another article.

For more information on sales training and coaching visit www.selfleadership.com

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