“By asking these two questions, you are creating a warm and trusting environment built on respect and understanding. You show that you’re genuinely interested in helping your counterpart across the table to be successful.” – Mark Schenkius in today’s Tip 303
What are your objectives for your business this year? What can I do to support you in achieving these objectives?
Join the conversation below and learn more about Mark!
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The Other Side of Sales
Mark Schenkius on LinkedIn
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Mark Schenkius out of the Netherlands and his tip is about perspective. Ironically it’s a perspective like Mark’s that I’ve long wanted to include in the show because Mark spent 15 years in procurement. He’s just published a book called: “The Other Side of Sales” which I’ll tell you more about once we hear from Mark. Here he is:
Mark Schenkius: Today I want to talk about Perspective. Any relationship between the buyer and a seller starts with perspective and to illustrate that, let me start with the following example. Imagine you’re sitting opposite a buyer at a negotiation table and in between the both of you is a coffee cup. From your perspective, the air might be on the right side. However, if you would ask the buyer, they would say the is on the left side. Now, this is fascinating because you’re looking at the exact same object that’s physically in front of you and you still both have a different perspective of the situation. Can you imagine what it looks like in a more complex negotiation? You could easily be miles apart and I’ve seen it happen so often, sellers making proposals that are servicing their own needs instead of the customer. I’ve literally had thousands of interactions with sellers and I can guarantee you that the ones who didn’t understand my position never won any business.
So what can you do as a seller? What’s the golden tip in these situations? Well, my advice would be to ask the following two questions to a buyer when you meet him. Question one, What are your objectives for your business this year? By asking this, you avoid the trap of a buyer saying, just give me a better price. Instead, you’re focusing on the bigger picture of your organization that the buyer part of. This way, you’re forcing them to take a step back from their personal objectives. Probably you’ll get one of the following answers. We want to grow our business this year by X percent or want to stay ahead of our competitors, or perhaps we want to become more profitable this year and they’re all very valid answers and probably our objectives will be similar within your own organization. The second question you could then raise would be, What can I do to support you in achieving these objectives? This question opens up a world of opportunities ranging from partnerships all the way down to price reductions and the great thing about his is that by asking these two questions, you are creating a warm and trusting environment built on respect and understanding. You show that you’re genuinely interested in helping your counterpart across the table to be successful. Now, which buyer doesn’t want that?
Scott Ingram: I think we can all agree that the better you understand your buyer and their perspectives, the better the outcomes. Mark is sharing all of these secrets from the time he spent as a professional buyer in his book: The Other Side of Sales and he’s offering 3 copies of the book to listeners of the Daily Sales Tips podcast! All you have to do is be one of the first 3 people to send me an email with the subject line: The Other Side of Sales and I’ll get you connected with Mark to get your copy. Just one caveat. I ask that you join the listener list if you haven’t already at DailySales.Tips/303 where you’ll also find more about Mark including links to his book.
Thanks for listening and be sure to come back tomorrow for another great tip from Jason Bay!