The Selling Advantage Community

What are the reasons buyers buy? There are hundreds of reasons prospects will end up buying from you, but the same handful of reasons tend to come up repeatedly. Key Buying Criteria A prospective customer’s key buying criteria can be condensed into five topics. A decision to buy a good or service can be made based on: Features and Benefits Quality Professional Support (or “ease of use”) Investment Image 1.  Product Features and Benefits This is an

Value based selling is a sales approach that reinforces to customers the reasons why your offer is valuable to them. Using this sales approach you focus on the needs of customers first, before the desires of the sales professional. A requirement for all sales reps in the sales process is to assist the customer in understanding the unique value for the solution/service/product that is being offered. Remember, value is in the customer’s mind and not necessarily in

If you want to “wow” your prospects and with memorable, engaging sales presentations, you need to have a framework from which you can build up to your pitch. In this article, we’ll share a three-part structure that will help you impress prospects and increase sales over your competitors. We’ll also discuss fundamental sales presentation techniques that will help you make a stronger impression on your clients and enhance your sales and marketing efforts overall. In Sales Presentations,

To understand the sales process, it is necessary to discuss the length of a sales cycle. Some sales cycles last only days after initial contact. Some last minutes. The average sales cycle, however, is measured in weeks and months. The gating factors in determining the time in which a sales cycle is completed are investment, risk, and sales competencies. These factors must be considered when constructing sales forecasts and planning your selling activity. Let’s dive deep into

As sales reps you are always on the lookout for how to make that perfect sales call. Here we present some tools that will help you take a giant leap towards perfection. The Goals of the Sales Call Initiating the connection with a prospective customer can be broken down into three goals. Goal 1: Introduce yourself Goal 2: Introduce your product/service Goal 3: Determine whether to continue on through the Buy/Sell sales process The goal that usually

These days, bulk email campaigns are becoming less effective due to an overload of spam and the corresponding abundance of increasingly efficient spam filters. Therefore, it is important for sales professionals to be selective when sending sales emails.  Email prospecting should only be used when it’s appropriate to the situation, like when a sales rep wants to include a link or an attachment about a value proposition. Successful emails by sales pros, sometimes referred to as “cold

Lead qualification, sometimes known as sales lead qualification, is not a phase, but a process. And it’s a process that can mean the difference between closing fast and efficiently versus wasting time on false starts. Are you and your sales and marketing teams following best practices in qualifying leads—or are you playing a guessing game? Read on to find out. Why Qualify? Before you can learn the optimal process for lead qualification, you’ll first need to understand

The 30 second speech, also known as an “elevator speech” or “elevator pitch,” is a way to explain your value proposition to potential clients or customers by highlighting only the key points you want them to know. Once you understand how to do it effectively, a 30 second speech will become second nature and your most efficient tool for helping potential clients quickly understand key aspects of your company and its products and services. A 30 second

Across the varied and unique sales strategies that exist to encourage interested consumers to purchase a product or service, feature benefit selling is perhaps the best approach for business owners who wish to frame their product in a way that customers will both understand and respond to. This article will explain the difference between features and benefits, and it will provide sales professionals with the guidance needed to incorporate a feature benefit selling strategy into their approach.

Selling to a company’s executives involves more intricate techniques than selling to mid-level employees, as executives want higher-level benefits than the general consumer. This article will cover the two categories of buyers as well as a fundamental sales strategy for C-level selling: the Cause/Effect tool. Two Types of Buyers Before we look at tools and techniques that will drive results when selling to executives, let’s understand what differentiates a C-level executive from a mid-level employee.  A mid-level