Customer-Centric Selling: Creating A Successful Sales Strategy

Customers are exasperated with sales reps who call or email just to showcase the positive picture of their company and solution. The issue is that these salespeople don’t seem interested in knowing how their prospect is or what they’re about. Customers are looking for a problem solver who can understand their goals, needs, and current business issues.

You need to have a customer-centric approach while selling:

• Step into your customer’s shoes and try to understand the difficulties they are facing
• Note their challenges and buying patterns
• Explain how the product will help in overcoming the hurdles in their business growth

Change your mindset; stop having a product-centric mentality. The below image will help you identify the differences between the two:

So, why should you focus on customer-centric approach? Here are a few key benefits:

• It will help build trust and credibility
• It improves customer-retention rate
• Prospects will be interested in dealing with you personally
• Prospects will be more open to purchasing if they feel they are getting true value
• Prospects might even refer you to their networks

Wondering how you can tailor your sales to the needs of your customers? Here are few strategies that will help you in having a customer-centric approach:

Help your customers

If you just focus on increasing your sales numbers, you will not be able to help your customers. Concentrate on your customers. Diagnose their business challenges and discuss it to assure them that you are here to help them genuinely.

Listen more, speak less

To understand what the prospect wants, you need to open your ears to their problems. Ask relevant questions to garner crucial information. The more you know about the prospect, the better solution you can render. Pay attention to their needs and understand their issues.

Respond immediately

Never keep your customers waiting; give them immediate attention. Don’t expect to revert to their queries later as it might end up being too late. No matter how busy you are, you need to respond on-time to earn their trust and make them feel like a priority.

Don’t stretch the communication

Don’t beat around the bush; save yours and the prospect’s time by sticking to the point throughout all comms. Prospects prefer shorter meetings and conversations as they have too many tasks on their plate. All they want to know is how their business will benefit from your offering. Be precise and hit the target by stating essential points that will capture their interest.

Have a natural conversation

Reading from a sales script implies you are only interested in selling your product. Don’t memorize a sales script and regurgitate it word for word and you won’t sound authentic. Instead, be attentive to your prospect’s concerns and let the conversation flow naturally based on the information they provide. A meaningful discussion can give them a reason to move forward.

To support these strategies, you need a powerful tool that can assist you in your endeavor to focus on customer-centric selling.

A CRM can help

With a cloud-based CRM, you can nurture relationships with your customers by connecting on a more personal level. It keeps you updated with round the clock access to all the important details of the clients and helps you in resolving their issues more quickly.

With a CRM, you can not only convert a potential prospect into a customer, but also retain the existing customer by providing a pleasant buying experience. Let’s explore this high-end tool to see how it can support your customer-centric selling.

Understand clients better with collected data

A CRM helps in amassing and maintaining the client’s data which can be helpful in determining their unique needs and expectations. It systematically stores all the information about the customer in one place eliminating clutter and confusion.

Easy access to vital data can:

• Aid sales professionals in making better sales decisions
• Facilitate better communications with the client
• Help in identifying the barriers clients are facing in scaling their business

Track communication

With a CRM system, you can easily track the interaction a client had with your company. It helps in gauging the amount of interest a client has in your solution. You can avoid missing any important detail a client mentioned in the conversation and even carry on the communication smoothly when you next connect, without having to think what you discussed earlier.

Timely notifications

As mentioned above, to build a good rapport with the clients it is necessary to follow up on-time. With CRM’s timely notifications, you can not only follow up in real time but also respond to their queries instantly. It even notifies you when a client clicks, opens or reads an email which helps in planning the next course of action.

Closing thoughts

Having a customer-centric mindset while selling can not only improve your sales performance, but also positively impact the revenue growth of the company. If you don’t help your customers, you are unlikely to move in a progressive direction.

Instead of just focusing on selling, try finding a solution to your clients’ problems. Take the aid of advanced technology like Salesmate CRM that can help in maintaining and analyzing customer information to identify and resolve their business pain points. Now give your prospects a reason to take the deal forward with a better approach. Happy Selling.