Want to Add Value in Your Sales “Process?” Try Adding Trust
“We need to constantly be adding value to our client base,” a comment said recently by a business leader in the South Asia territory for a major US medical company.
Yes I agree wholeheartedly. But how do salespeople and support teams add value?
Value add can be defined in numerous ways, for example…
Offering the best solutions to a clients’ problems
Support throughout the whole sales cycle- pre, implementation, post.
Overall by positioning the product, the comapny and the salesperson himself
…and more
Value add as defined by Tom Reilly, who wrote the book Value Added Selling ….”the only differentiation that may exist in this competitive comparison could rest with the salesperson. Two Fortune-100 companies surveyed their customers to determine how much value their salespeople contributed to the sale; they discovered that 35-37% of the value that customers receive comes from the salespeople with whom they deal. Value added salespeople don’t make sales calls; they go on job interviews with customers. They ask customers to hire them to be their personal representative with the supplier’s company.”
So Tom’s definition of value add is the salesperson as the company differentiator. I agree.
But, building trust through trustworthiness is also a value add. How? By putting the client first.
When you put the client first, the client sees that you care about him and his interests and not just about pushing a product or service.
And, as Charlie Green says in Trust-based Selling “It is possible for selling to be a genuinely value adding, beneficial process for the buyer AND seller alike.”
You just have to align trust properly. And if you align trust properly, it will be your value add and the differentiator.
Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore
Tags: People Skills, Relationship Management, Sales, Selling Skills, Trust
December 15th, 2009 at 12:33 am
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