three sales approaches

After a good deal of reflection it appears as if there are 3 Key Approaches To Sales and SellingFeature Benefit SellingHere the focus is on the features or benefits of your service or product. Solid 'old school' in the parlance of the new breed of sales professionals.Pros:� Comes from a place of clarity about your offering.Cons:� Selling cycle stalls on issue of price and comparative value of product/service.Solution SellingYou are not 'selling' anything you are entering into a dialogue with your prospects in order to find 'the problems' that you and your product or service can 'solve'Pros:� Engenders long term, positive relationship with sales professional so that THEY as well as theiproduct have value.Cons:� Requires the sales professional to have an honest intention to 'support' rather than to 'sell". This results in a longer initial sales cycle.Provocation SellingUsing 'intelligence' about the prospects business in order to raise challenging questions about how they are going to achieve their goals.Pros:� The sales professional becomes a valuable resource to their client and has a genuine interest in collaboration.Cons:� If 'intelligence' is misused the sales person could be seen as 'fear mongering' and creating a climate of need.So what would you say is your key approach?Does it bring results and how, in the light of the economic downturn have you adapted your sales process?Perhaps the danger is that the current climate itself causes sales teams to be more aggressive and so losing site of the real value and power the professional sales person has.Perhaps it is as valid to consider where you want to position yourself for the 'long game'.Perhaps the questions that need to be asked are not simply about increasing sales and sales effectiveness now but about the strategies that will best help you be effective at the tail-end of this recession.Your relationship with your clients is paramount.So if you allow yourself only to think of the 'bottom line' and 'delivering according to reducing budgets' what message will that send out?I was speaking to a local entertainer who, not surprisingly, has been finding things very difficult. Less disposable income has the knock on effect of reducing attendance at social events and hence the need for entertainers.He has been in a position where he has been forced to cut costs in order to get the work - in order to close the deal. The quality of his product (his skills as a performer) has not changed, but he has been offering his services at increasingly discounted rates.His 'sales pitch', which once upon a time was more about defining clients needs and problems, has now become one of 'value' and 'cost'.Perfectly understandable, but I do wonder what will be the long term of effect of this. Surely there has to be limit to the amount he can discount his service.I wonder what questions clients will ask when, in a year r so's time, he suddenly appears to double or triple his price for a service they have seen valued by him at a much lower level?In terms of your sales approach and being in it for the long term perhaps it is worth asking yourself the following question...What is my intent and how dies that dictate my "inner sales game'?If the intent is to sell and 'close' no matter what then all you have to offer now, and for the future,� will be cut prices, lower costs to client...If the intent is to 'solve problems' and build relationships then your value (and that of your product or service) will be far greater than the 'cheaper' alternative.Alan

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