Customercentric Selling

Strategies for Looking Past Your Products--to Uncover What YourBuyersWantThe most difficult task in selling--and the number one key to success--is to get inside the head of your buyer.CustomerCentric Sellingpresents a dynamic process for first understanding and shaping your buyers' concerns, then helping those same buyers visualize using your offering to achieve goals, solve problems, or satisfy needs.Renowned sales leaders Michael Bosworth--author of the blockbuster bestsellerSolution Selling--and John Holland outline an easy-to-follow, commonsense, and proven-successful approach to selling, one that is based on: Engaging in directed conversations instead of making presentations Asking relevant questions instead of offering personal opinions Targeting decision makers instead of product usersBosworth and Holland combine nearly three decades of experience in sales process and training. Hundreds of lessons they learned along the way are incorporated into their CustomerCentric Sales approach--an approach proven to work for sales professionals at every level, regardless of industry or product line. LetCustomerCentric Sellingshow you how to make this revolutionary process work for you, and start you on the path to achieving long-term sales success by first forming partnerships with your buyers--based not on selling what you have but on providing what they need."Customercentric behavior has seven basic tenets. These are explained in sequence in the first chapter. As you read these descriptions, we invite you to imagine a spectrum of selling behavior--ranging from traditional on one end to customercentric on the other--and to locate yourself on that spectrum. Are you where you want to be, to be as successful as you can be?"If not, what needs to change?"--From Chapter 1You're probably a successful salesperson, sales manager, sales executive, or CEO. You may even be one of the best.CustomerCentric Sellingcan help you to be even better.Better in that you will stop thinking in terms of your products and their features, and start thinking in terms of your buyers and their goals, problems, and needs. Better in that you will stop forcing products on buyers, and instead start allowing them to convince themselves of their need for your offerings. Better in that you will stop giving long-winded, opinion-laden speeches to lower-level "buyers", and instead begin to have no-nonsense, results-oriented business conversations with decision makers.Better at virtually every stage of your approach.Whether you are new to sales or a CEO, the market-proven methods outlined inCustomerCentric Sellingwill show you how to:Move beyond impersonal presentations to engage in situation-specific, one-to-one conversations with key decision makers Consistently use sales-ready messaging to ensure your approach is both meaningful and on target Move buyers from focusing on what your productcan doforthem to focusing on what theycan dowithyour product Convert your product's features into four-step, targeted usage scenarios that drive right to the heart of your buyer's needs Transform the sell cycle from a realm of mystery to a rational, orderly, and cooperative process with individual buyers and even committeesCustomerCentric Sellingwill show you how to transform each sales call from an annoying, artificial one-way speech into a productive, genuine two-way conversation. It will help you understand and shape your customers' needs, and then--andonlythen--reveal to your customer how your offering will fulfill those needs in the most cost-effective, meaningful, and customercentric manner possible.Bosworth, Michael is the author of 'Customercentric Selling', published 2003 under ISBN 9780071425452 and ISBN 0071425454.