What parts of your sales process are you still using that your customer couldn’t care less about?
Below are 6 questions you must ask yourself about your selling process:
1. What percentage of my customers have done research on the internet before meeting with me?
At what point during the sales process are they doing this? If they’re doing it before you meet with them, I would refer to this as exploratory.
If, on the other hand, they’re doing it after they’ve met with you, then this may indicate the information you’re sharing in your sales presentation is not answering their questions.
2. Is the information that customers are gathering from the internet accurate or not accurate?
List what you’ve heard to help educate you as to what your customers are thinking.
3. Do customers mention the names of competitors, and if so, what are they saying about them?
If the customer is bench-marking you against a competitor, this may say your competitor is providing better information on the web than you.
4.  In your sales presentation, are you sharing the same information that is on your company’s website?
If so, how is the customer responding? If your customer is responding indifferently, it’s likely you’re insulting the prospect by repeating what they already know.
5. Do your customers bring you questions in direct response to what they might have seen on the internet?
The quality and level of the questions can tell you a lot about the level of research they’ve done on the internet.
6. During your presentation, do you reference information the customer could find on the internet?
Asking the customer a couple of questions that reference the web can tell you a lot about the customer’s level of willingness to use the web to gain information.
Your objective as a salesperson in today’s business climate is to bring to customers a level of confidence and insight they could not gain from the Internet.
This means taking the time to engage the customer in questions, not wasting their time showing them the same information they already saw on the web.
Copyright 2013, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
WE are in the midst of redesigning our website right now. The tips you provide are all insightful ways for us to prepare for all of our customer interactions.