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 SAVVY
SELLING - MAY
7, 2007
The
Pitch for Speed
by Michelle Nichols
EXECUTIVE
OVERVIEW
If
"time is the new money,"
consider these six time-saving
benefits you can offer to prospective
customers on your next sales
call
Time is money, sure. But customers
are increasingly more interested
in saving time than they are
in saving money. Remember that
regardless of how much money
people have, they still have
only 24 hours in a day. Even
Bill Gates doesn't have 25 hours
in a day. As another wealthy
man, publisher Malcolm Forbes
Sr., once quipped, "Unless
you're serving time, there's
never enough of it."
Here are six time-related benefits
you can offer to your customers.
No matter what you sell, challenge
yourself to apply each benefit
in different situations. You
will sell more.
1. Faster to Market If you
can show how your offering will
help your customer get a new
product or service ready to
sell faster than competitive
offerings, you will be giving
them a competitive advantage.
Don't forget that you may be
competing against their in-house
resources, too.
For example, say a client is
launching a new product line
and you sell marketing and PR
services. Perhaps their in-house
marketing department plans to
launch the new products but
is backed up with other projects.
Your argument to close the deal
should be that by helping get
their product announced before
their in-house group can, the
company will receive additional
cash flow from new contracts
much sooner.
2. Faster Results Customers
want instant results. Perhaps
you can show them how they can
measure the results of a marketing
campaign or manufacturing process
faster than before by using
your offering. You can explain
that by speeding up the process,
they can make corrections sooner,
which decreases error rates
and waste. Many online advertisers
sell this benefit, but you can
apply it to almost any process.
3. Faster to Operate If you
sell equipment that can produce
more widgets per hour, offer
it as a valuable benefit to
your customer. Find out if your
customers need more production
power at certain peak times,
such as over holidays or during
the summer months. You could
offer to save them costly overtime
or outsourcing expenses.
4. Faster to Train If your
customer's business has high
employee turnover, sell the
offering based on its learning
curve and ease of use. After
all, if your customers have
to wait to train their employees,
they're losing precious efficiency
and productivity. For an offering
that takes more time to learn
to use, offer a training DVD
or a Webinar employees can watch
any time. It may be enough to
win the order for you.
5. Faster to Modify, Upgrade,
or Customize Customers know
their needs will change over
time, but they want to get the
longest useful life out of their
purchases. If you sell accounting
software, for example, show
your customers how easy it is
to upgrade when tax rates or
withholding tables change. Apply
the same idea to all types of
equipment.
6. Faster to Deliver or Install
Sometimes, the first seller
to be able to deliver wins the
order. I've bought expensive
items simply because they were
in stock, and you probably have,
too. If your customer can begin
saving money or earning more
revenue very soon after they
buy from you, use this benefit
to close them.
One of my favorite book titles
is It's Not the Big that Eat
the Small…It's the Fast
that Eat the Slow by Jason Jennings
and Laurence Haughton (Collins).
Although it's not a sales book,
the title reminds me of the
increasing power of selling
time-related benefits to my
customers. I hope you will try
the same approach. Happy selling!
Michelle Nichols is a
professional sales speaker and
consultant based in Reno, Nevada.
She is also the Savvy
Selling podcast host for
BusinessWeek. She welcomes your
questions and comments. You
can visit her web site at www.savvyselling.com
or contact her at michelle.nichols@savvyselling.com.
Her toll-free number is (877)
352-9684 and direct line is
(775) 303-8201.
Copyright 2007. All rights
reserved.
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