More and more, I am facing sales to 2 groups:
- Current customers
- New customers
Writing the 2 groups out like seems kind of silly. It’s obvious that sales can be divided like this. So, let me ask you: do you really sell differently to each group? When you pick up the phone to call someone, do you think about the difference?
Maybe this example will make it more clear:
- You’re on the phone
- The customer asks you what is so good about your blastometer. He saw one yesterday from another guy, and his looked pretty good…blasted pretty well
- You open your mouth…
If it’s a customer, I bet you say something like, “Yeah, their blastometer is not so bad. It might be a little better in fronking than ours. Still, if you connect our blastometer to the indurator you already own, you’ll be all set. Remember when you told me you wanted to do that?”
If they’re not a customer, I bet you say something like, “Hmmm…I didn’t even know that theirs worked in your environment. What do you like better? When we went through the review, you told me you liked how fast ours was. Is theirs faster? ”
The tone is totally different. Your customer trusts you (hopefully). You’ve built a long-term relationship (hopefully) and earned enough loyalty-points to really be straight up with her. You’re trading on your history and your performance.
In the second one, this customer probably won’t believe any statement you say – prospects take everything with a monster grain of salt (hmmm…maybe you should do the same when she speaks). You’re engaging the client here – getting her to talk to you – you need to figure out what the deal is with the customer. You might already be in trouble – now is the time to figure it out.
But, anyway, this is all so obvious. You do this all the time!
