GUARANTEED to Increase Sales!
TRUST and VALUE!
Part 1
Seems too simple to be true doesn't it? These two time honored principals
of selling are the fundamentals to EVERY successful sale! Your customer
must TRUST you if they are going to buy something you have to offer AND
they must see the VALUE in what you have to offer! The real trick to these are "HOW?". How do you create trust with your customer and how do you
ensure your customer perceives that your product has value for them?
Trust is identified by a sense of comfort and ease. Go back to the post of
April 7th "Tip of the Week CHALLENGE!!!!!". If you buy your customer lunch
during the very emotional process of buying a car, you have made a
great step in the right direction of gaining their trust. That's not to say
that EVERY customer you buy lunch for will automatically trust you
but with more customers than not, a generous gesture will move you
forward in the right direction. Ask yourself, how many salespeople
have bought you lunch during a lengthy purchase process? Our customers
are no different than we are when we go to buy a new suit, new outfit
or a new computer. How often have you bought ANYTHING from a
salesperson that you didn't trust? And what makes YOU trust a salesperson?
Part of building rapport with your customer is for this very reason,
to create a bond, to find some commonalities, to establish grounds of trust.
If your customer asks you, "What would you buy if you were me?",
you know you have done your job of developing trust between you.
Here are some suggestions to build trust with your customer:
- RAPPORT, warm and meaningful conversation, this is a topic in itself and will be further elaborated on in the Profit Drivers website to launch June 30th. For now, ask some questions to promote conversation with your customer. Keep the conversation entirely away from the car at first and see if you can establish some commonalities between yourselves. Be sure you steer the conversation though, you want to be effective with the brief time you have, there is lots to cover yet!
- BE HONEST. Example: If your customer sincerely only plans to keep their car for 5 years, offer them their warranty extension options and recommend they take the lesser priced 5-year plan because that would best match their expected length of ownership. This honesty principal will win you many brownie points with your customer if you cater your product recommendations to suit their lifestyle and ownership needs!
- RELATIVITY. Describe to your customer how your product(s) are relative to their particular circumstances. Example: Maybe they park their car outside under trees and the paint protection will help preserve the new car condition of the paint OR, maybe your customer is elderly and never has pets nor children nor drinks in the car and therefore a customized discounted protection package that excludes the fabric protection is ideal for him/her.
- SOLVE PROBLEMS and/or CORRECT MISTAKES. If your customer identifies a problem or a mistake when they sit down with you, stop all further action and deal with it right then and there. First, you need to clear the air. If there is any concern about the deal they have just signed, they will be less open to purchase additional "add-on" products you have to offer. In fact, they probably won't even hear what you have to say because their thoughts will be clouded with whatever the problem/mistake is. Covering up a problem or denying that one exists is a sure way to make yourself a big fat donut ($0.00) on the back-end profit of that deal!
- LISTEN to your customer and RESPECT what they say! If they tell you they had a terrible experience once with undercoating and NEVER what to purchase that product again, honor their feelings, be EMPATHETIC that they had a lousy experience and be inquisitive. Be genuinely interested in what happened and why. In most cases you will find that the incident occurred many years ago and the products have changed significantly since then. It is your responsibility to let your customer know that what happened in the past reflected out-of-date policies/products, and there are amazing new options/technologies today. You are educating your customer rather than selling them something. Once you have updated them with the current information, offer your new product, ask for the sale. They may or may not purchase your offering but they will feel that you heard their concerns, you took the time to educate them about current products and gave them the opportunity to choose if they want to purchase your new offering(s).
Part 2, Building VALUE in what you have to offer your customer will be covered later this week in another post.
This Blog is Committed and Dedicated to Your Success!
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