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Customer Centric Selling

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Customer Centric Selling

McGraw-Hill,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Text available

What's inside?

For customer centered sales, don't tell customers your product's features. Ask customers what they want it to do.

Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

This is an interesting, useful guide to selling a non-traditional way. Many companies, especially in high-technology industries, build their sales effort around early adopters. But early adopters are a minority of the market and their needs and preferences are distinct from those of the mainstream. To adjust their sales effort to the mainstream majority of the market, companies must listen to their audience. Instead of building sales messages around products, they need to build their sales communications and their sales process around customer needs and preferences. Customer-centric selling begins in the earliest stages of marketing and proceeds through the final sale. Authors Michael T. Bosworth and John R. Holland clearly set forth the nature of customer-centric selling and provide a comprehensive guide. getAbstract.com recommends this worthwhile addition to any salesperson’s bookshelf.

Summary

Customer-centric Selling Defined

Customer-centric selling has seven fundamental principles:

  1. Converse instead of presenting - The usual sales approach is to give a presentation with flashy PowerPoint slides, animated film and such. Salespeople seem to think that dimming the lights sets a dramatic mood. But presentations don’t let you identify and respond directly and in a customized way to the buyer’s needs. Conversations do.
  2. Ask instead of expressing opinions - Center your sales effort around the customer. Most buyers would rather talk about themselves than listen to you talk about yourself (or your firm or product). Take advantage of the human need to self-promote, and ask.
  3. Solve problems - Don’t just exploit a relationship. Most salespeople seem to believe that the relationship determines everything. But what determines a relationship? If you demonstrate clearly that your product or service solves the customer’s specific, pressing problem, you’ll make the sale and build your relationship.
  4. Talk in a businesslike way - Talk about what your product or service will do and how it works and why it is ...

About the Authors

Michael T. Bosworth, the author of Solution Selling, and John R. Holland are co-founders of CustomerCentric System LLC.

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