What comes first in your sales process? Many salespeople are guilty of focusing on the money they could make. Or they could simply be focusing on meeting their quota in order to keep their jobs in the poor economy. Regardless, if the prospect’s success is not your top priority, your sales process is not as effective as it can be.

Perfecting Your Sales Process

An article by Selling Power calls out sales reps for following, “a sales process that reflects the way they want to sell, not how the customer prefers to buy.” How do you do this? The article suggests seeing the sales process as a customer engagement process instead.

All you really need to do to increase customer engagement in your sales process is to get the answer to one question. “What are your customer’s needs?” You can go into a sales meeting and tout the technological advances of your product and how modern it is compared to most in the field or previous models. However, if your prospect cares primarily about the financials of the purchase or minimizing business risk, they’re not going to focus on the finer features of your product.

Putting Engagement to Use

“Customers don’t want to be ‘sold to,’” writes Selling Power. “They prefer that sellers engage them instead.” The best way to engage is by asking questions centered around the prospect’s wants and needs. Say your questions lead to the conclusion that they’re worried about the financials surrounding the sales process. They could know that not taking action could cost their company money. But they could also be worried about being able to afford your solution. In that situation, start a conversation centered on their fears. Put their mind at ease by listing data-​backed estimates of the return on investment (ROI) of your product. It could potentially pay for itself in a short amount of time. Weigh that ROI against the amount it will cost the prospect to put off finding a solution. This type of engaging discussion is what they really wanted out of the sales process.

“Buyers today don’t want information; they want insight,” writes Selling Power. “Ditching the pitch is a much-​needed step toward winning more deals and achieving higher levels of customer satisfaction.”