Previously in our buyer/seller harmony series, we looked at salespeople in the role of the hero. And truly, salespeople and selling organizations do provide heroic solutions to buyer distress.
Yet, when it comes down to it, everyone is the hero of their own story — and the same is true for your buyers. Imagine what makes a true hero: There is a person with a mission (an organization, you could say), who has goals but faces a number of obstacles. To overcome these mountain passes and dragons, this person needs a trusted and credible guide to lead the hero to his or her success. This hero, my seller, is your buyer.
But in which role does that leave your selling organization?
In one of the most vital roles to their plights, in fact: You are your buyers’ trusted and credible buyer journey guide. You have the power to help your buyers reach their greatest successes. And in doing so, you may just find that you are meeting your own as well.
Read on to learn how to master this balance of buyer/seller harmony.
Buyers Need Your Guidance Through Their Journey
A buyer does not one day sit down at his or her desk and spontaneously realize their company needs your solution. Many times they do not even see the true challenges lurking across their company and in the surrounding landscape.
Buyers must go on a journey to find the solution to their challenges. And with a trusted advisor to guide them, they have a better chance of finding the solution that will help them achieve, and even exceed, their goals. Are you ready to be that guide?
Slow down for a moment and consider this: A buyer’s lengthy and arduous journey often does not fit into the timeline of sellers. Sellers work within the realm of urgency. They have quotas to meet, and CSO and CEO pressures to answer. But a seller who leans into their own pressures and foregoes supporting a buyer on their important journey will come off as pushy — and will ultimately be pushed aside themselves for an alternative solution, or none whatsoever.
In a selling climate where the buyer is in more control than ever before — with more tools for navigating the journey than in the past — how can a seller achieve harmony with the buyer journey and be an essential guide?
Meet Your Buyer on Their Path
Most buyers today do not engage salespeople until long after they have identified their challenges and a number of possible solutions. While this may put salespeople in a difficult spot in their guiding efforts — there are means of serving buyers with the right value messaging before even making real contact.
As an expert on your buyer, you can hit the right points across channels where your buyers will be searching. Think your website, think your virtual content, think your social selling strategies. Are these the bread and butter of sales conversations? Not quite. But they can and should have consistent messaging that will prime and guide your buyers directly to your buyer hero guides.
Guide, Do Not Pull, Your Buyer in Their Journey
Once salespeople are in contact with buyers, they must resist the urge to yank along the buyer to the solution. Even if it seems an obvious path, buying psychology demands a steady, cautious process that goes from one stage to the next. Would Yoda have rushed Luke Skywalker’s use of the force? There certainly was an urgency, however, Skywalker would not have been ready to face his ultimate challenges if he had not gone on his journey to uncover his strength and to see all the solutions available to him against the Dark Side.
Are Your Sellers Enabled With Tools for Each Stage of the Buyer’s Journey? Prepare to Be the Ultimate Guide Now.
Your buyer may need to be encouraged and educated along the way, however, any urgency you provide your buyer must come from their perspective, to benefit their behalf and to be of the utmost thoughtfulness of their needs.
Seek to Serve, Not to Sell™
To learn more about overcoming common selling status quos for the pinnacle of buyer/seller harmony, read my latest piece in Top Sales Magazine. And for help with building a powerful and servant-minded sales engine that supports sustainable revenue performance while winning an unfair share™ of the market, reach out to our team of experts.