1. This topic is for the professional who want to make more money, the right way.
2. It is important to know his dreams and aspirations before we make the sale.
3. Great sales people know how far they can stretch the customer’s need.
4. But inexperienced sales people make the mistake of selling early and selling cheap.
5. Thus knowing to sell is critical but choosing the right amount to sell is also critical.
6. Consider a whale fish, which needs to eat a lot of fishes as food and we sell this fish a 5 kg food basket. Just because we wanted to close the deals early.
7. Has you realized the actual need of the customer, you would not have to maybe ever sell again to anyone else.
So knowing the need is important on all sales calls, however stretching is where the great salesman make his/her mark.
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- Salesman today have been taught how to identify the need of the customer by the sales trainers in their respective professions. Some salesman have learnt these identifiers by simply selling regularly.
- Knowing the need of your customer is essential to aligning him to a purchase decision. But Stretching it is a game played by few knowingly.
Question Yourself ?
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- Do you remember a salesperson trying to sell you something extra along with an original purchase?
- How about you remember the times when you want to buy one items but there is a special discounted pack available only if your order a dozen?
Example of the situation
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- Classic : You go to buy a Hatchback, end up with a Sedan.
- This example is so true and that is how the salesman in automobile showrooms are making sales of the Sedan vehicles more than the hatchbacks.
Author Suggests
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- Great salesman know when and how much you should stretch the need.
- A better salesman would take that need and make it large enough for you to buy the world.
Question Yourself ?
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- Would you try and sell him the product right now without stretching the need, knowing well that it can be stretched to a new horizon?
- Sometimes it becomes necessary to intentionally oversell and to use the customers requirements and needs in a new light.
- In such a scenario one would want to look at what the customer requires first and then offer them another premium alternative option.
- Author Quotes: “Needs can be identified and sold to.”.
- It is required anytime you want to increase your commission and give the customers a premium product that is not what he was looking to buy.
Author suggests
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- To make the customer at ease with your presence, and provide him the opportunity to give to you what he wants in the product.
- To become his partner in this purchase decision and guide him as an advisor to his needs.
- To showcase the stretch you want and to give him valid reasons to buy the same.
- Also to those who think this does not work well, I ask them to look at bigger cars, bigger ships, bigger boats, bigger houses, bigger pools and anything that has just got bigger.
Words of wisdom
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- No one needs it today, but some would want it now.
Author Examples
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- In a business of selling Insurance, stretching the need was part and parcel of daily life, as it was necessary to inform the customer that his expectation of his goal was not ideal. As he had not considered the all important factor of inflation in this world. And this would increase the amount of money needed for the goal.
- In a business of selling a car, the need to have a car for a growing family. It was easy to showcase the difference between a hatchback and sedan in terms of leg space and additional space for a 3rd
- In a business of selling a phone, it is always easier to upgrade to a 20 megapixel camera from a previous 15 megapixel version.
- In a business of customer service, we would rephrase the requirements of the customer to ensure we had understood, and then post that we would add a special gesture to take it to the next level in conversation. This is called stretching the customers expectation horizons. And once we did that the customer would be all praises for the way he was handled.
Words of wisdom
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- Never think stretching and selling a thing the customer does not need is a good practice.
