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Seeing the world from your client’s perspective can make for easier sales
Each week we meet and speak with a variety of prospective and/or existing clients who have problems they need solving in our area of expertise. It is more than likely we will deal with a mix of clients: some with little or no understanding about what we really do and those with previous experience, knowledge and opinions in our area of expertise. And then there are those clients who are in between. Whatever their level of sophistication, how well we understand and identify our clients' key priorities and problems, and what they value about working with a credible business partner is crucial to developing, attracting and retaining healthy client relationships and growing sales. However, most businesses tend to view the world from their own perspective and not from their clients'. This means:

Other product discussions Related Articles

Six levels of competitive readiness: How to get ready for the ambush...
To succeed today you need more than the right product or service. As soon as the market catches on, someone else will find a way to provide a similar product or service. To stay a step ahead of this competition you must already have a plan to move your product or service up a hierarchy of competitive levels. Once you have provided the need at one level, you have to be prepared to provide the need at the next level. This is product readiness for the competitive ambush ahead. This is how to stay ahead of the competition with what Theodore Levitt once described as the generic product, the expected product, the augmented product, and the potential product.
Five tactics for selling Africa-based products to non-Africans
I’ve been having discussions about the difficulties of selling African products to non-Africans for years. As I mentioned in my post about African affluence, and Benin expanded upon in his post on advertisers ignoring Africa, there are many hurdles that come with proving the worth of an Africa-focused product of service, especially when it comes to non-Africans. But while many of us can certainly make a good living selling our products to Africans alone, there is also a need to introduce the non-African market to those same products.

Selling Value
Selling has its own set of challenges and getting objections from your prospect rates right up there at the top. One particular and all too frequent objection you may here is the one about pricing. We’ve all heard it, “I’m afraid your price is a little high.” Keep in mind that people don’t buy Price, they buy Value, even though they won’t always admit it. This objection means that they don’t fully appreciate the “Value” of what you are selling. However, if this objection keeps coming up in your discussions, then it’s a good indication that they are interested. So don’t view this as a negative objection since it could simply be a buying sign. Unfortunately, many sales people start to discount their product in order to overcome this objection, which is the wrong way to go.
5. Penetration Selling -- Penetrating the Barriers to Understanding
In Penetration Selling, we therefore recognize that the key barriers which need to be penetrated during the presentation are: • Anything that might block the prospect from achieving a full understanding of the product, and even more importantly, • Anything that might block the prospect from gaining a good understanding of how the product will more than adequately satisfy his key needs and wants for owning that product. For a prospect to develop sufficient interest in and desire for acquiring a product, he needs to not only become familiar with the features of that product, but he needs to additionally become convinced that the benefits which that product offers him will more than satisfy his specific purposes for acquiring that product. For example...

When you hear, "Your Price Is Too High!!
When your customer tells you your price is too high—You have made the sale. That’s right. They are telling you • The product you are selling satisfies all their needs • he product solves their problems • They love your product/service • They want your product/service Now all you have to do is show them your product is worth more to them than their money. All you have to do is turn the feature Price into a BENEFITT.
Advertising Online Compared To What We Do, Online Marketing
Many people get confused with the differences between Advertising Online and Online Marketing and after having discussions about this topic on several occasions the conclusion is most believe them to be closely related or one in the same. I will try to shed some light on these completely different methods of "Getting The Word Out" about a particular product or business using The Bow and Arrow as an analogy.

The most important thing to know about your strategic plan.
As part of the product development process for RapidInfluence we had numerous sessions with individuals both inside and outside of our target market. The purpose of these discussions were to work through the premises of our Strategic Planning Manifesto and to preview the first version of our product. One of the more insightful sessions we had was with Ian Smith of Portfolio Partnership and the author of The Smith Report, a must read for growth companies. In our session we discussed the need for companies to create strategic plans and more importantly to implement them. During our discussion, Ian rightly pointed out that success in strategic plan implementation was largely dependent on knowing what the status of various action items are within the strategic plan.
Impact and Influence in Negotiation – See How They Plan and Organise
For people to be influenced by you and for you to have personal impact in negotiations, discussions and meetings they need to “buy” what you have to “sell”. This article is about how they organise things and the amount of structure they seem to like. This is of vital importance not only in the meetings and discussions themselves but in any plans for the future – what happens after agreement has been reached and the discussions move to implementation.
Impact and Influence in Action – Make Sure Everyone Knows Where You’re Starting From
It’s important to set the scene for the discussions and make sure everyone is clear about the agenda. The danger here is that the need to get what you want or to resolve the issue means you jump straight into problem solving mode and discussions become about what needs to happen to move things to a conclusion. Just as important is clarifying what current reality is right now. It might not be where you or “they” would like to be but it is where you are in reality and thus is the starting point.
How do CEOs think?
I travel regularly to meet our customers. Normally, we work with the VP Engineering and the CTO of product Companies. I meet them regularly and most of the time our meetings are technical discussions or discussions about specific projects we may be working on. As the market was slow, most of our customers were not in a position to discuss specific projects. Most projects were on hold, and our customers were under pressure from their CEOs and Boards to reduce costs. This meant that they were pushing us for rate discounts.
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