How to Increase Your Chances of Selling Technical Products/Services to Non-Technical SME's

Guest Contributor: Albert Luk
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I am going to take it as an assumption that, as a basic sales strategy, one should sell benefits and not features. But what if you are selling products/services which are inherently technical and feature rich? What if your product is cutting edge, first to market or technically difficult to explain in a 30 second sound bite? Do you sell the features as the benefit itself?

The answer-"Shut up and listen."

This simple yet effective piece of advice was once told to me by Nicki Weiss. Nicki is friend of mine who helps technically inclined companies such as NovoNordisk Pharmaceuticals and Fisher Scientific sell more effectively to their clients- whether SME or big business to big business. (I would recommend visiting Nicki's website at www.saleswise.ca and subscribing to her newsletter for sage sales advice).

The underlying theme of Nicki's advice is to focus on the client's needs, talk less and avoid the techie speak. In other words, avoid the following three common downfalls of ineffective salespeople of technical products/services:

1. Not being curious about the customer and their business: Do you notice that you focus on techie talk, attempting to impress potential clients with sophisticated product knowledge?

2. Not Listening Deeply: Do you notice that you use your potential client's comments as a springboard for your own comments, experiences or products and the conversation becomes very one-sided?

3. Not linking the benefits of the product or service to a potential clients needs: Do you notice that you tell the client all about the latest and greatest features of your product or service without making any direct link back to their exact needs?

If you, or your sales staff, have fallen into this pattern, there are a few tips that Nicki suggests (each tip below counteracts the downfall above so tip 1 responses to downfall 1 etc.):

1. Focus on your clients' objectives and how the technical product or service supports this objective. Ask open ended questions which reveal your client's objectives before focusing on the techie talk. Ask open ended questions such as:

"What things are important to your customers today?"

"What do you want to achieve?"

"What issues will the new fix have to address?"

By being curious about your client, you have created a bridge between your product or service and client needs.

2. Listen Deeply (or "shut up and listen"): Be curious about the customer and their business issues. Clarify, confirm and explore in your conversation. Understand customer needs. Let the client talk 80% of the time. Notice the underlying mood, tone and impact of your conversation rather than being absorbed in bits and bytes.

3. Link the benefit of the product and service to the client's needs: Excellent salespeople slow down the conversation in order to hear and pinpoint needs and link the benefit back to those needs. For example, a great salesperson may say: "So, you're looking for a way to improve communication between the branch offices and head office, in order to improve response time to your customers. Is that right?" (pinpointing need) "That makes sense. We have product XYZ, and it works this way...What that means to you is you'll be able to improve the communication between the branch offices and head office, in order to improve response time to your customers." (linking the benefits to the need)."
   

As a good starting point to implementing more effective SME sales strategy, have a mentor, sales coach or co-worker comment on your current techniques. Based on these comments, refine your sales strategy using some of the tips in this article and have these same people help you practice becoming more effective in your approach.

As a seller of highly specialized and technical services myself, I want to share one tip with you in my next post that has nothing to do with selling the actual product or service. Have a great month.