The economy is causing all kinds of challenges. So what can you do? One thing—stop selling.
Before I explain, I have some good and some bad news. The good news is the active buyers will be back to buy your automobiles soon—of this you can be sure. The bad news is that things will never be the same. Buyers have fundamentally shifted how they purchase cars and there will be no more going back.
The era of skimming the cream and picking the low hanging market fruit is officially over. There is simply no more low hanging fruit left, which is either a threat or an opportunity, depending on your mindset and competency level.
As you know, the Internet enables immediate sourcing of your competitors, traditional and otherwise. Often, with just a few keystrokes, buyers are flooded with options.
So, here’s the bottom line and the paradox, buyers don’t need salespeople as much anymore. Yet, in another respect, they need salespeople now more than ever before to cut through the clutter and to help them make good decisions.
So, what can you do to drive sales in this new era?
1.     Get out of the product business and into the results business. You’re in a rather commoditized and mature market. Huge supply, little differentiation. Yet, what customers really need is to work with salespeople who can configure better transportation solutions—solutions that require your unique know-how. Cars are commodities, but your expertise is not.
2.    Learn how your customers make buying decisions. In effect, I’m asking you to learn buyer psychology. Let’s finish by talking about this point in more detail.
Think about how your customers make their purchasing decisions. First, they decide whether they want to make a transportation change. If the answer is “yes,” their psychology changes from “should I change” to “what is my best choice?” These are two very different psychologies, each requiring very different selling strategies.
For instance, a prospect who wanders into a dealership may be curious about what’s out there, but they haven’t committed to make a change. A smart salesperson would not “sell,” but attempt to stimulate demand by helping the buyer realize that change is in his/her best interest. The best strategy for this situation would be a research-proven method called F.O.C.A.S., a powerful questioning model which I map out in great detail in my new book, A Seat at the Table.
On the flip side, a buyer in the “shopping stage” has already decided to change, so their attention shifts to identifying the best solution. In this sales scenario, your strategy would be to uncover and develop selection criteria to help the buyer make the best possible choice.
Selling by aligning with buyer psychology is what a transportation consultant does. A salesperson pushes product and no one wants to deal with a salesperson in an era of Internet transparency and global competition. So, stop selling. Start asking questions, start helping your customers, and watch your sales grow.
Marc Miller is founder and CEO of Sogistics Corporation, an internationally known sales productivity improvement firm. Marc is also author of A Seat at the Table: How Top Salespeople Connect and Drive Decisions at the Executive Level (Greenleaf Book Group, May 2009). Call 330-487-0300 or visit www.sogistics.com for more information.