It’s in the bag – they really liked me. How often have you heard that? In selling we all know at the end of the day the difference between success and failure is often relationships. In may be heresy but once you get past price and function many products and services are similar and its down to do I want to do business with this person that counts.
But how often does the next conversation with your sales team go something like, ‘What happened to X I thought it was in the bag? Oh well no turned out they really liked OurCompetition.com. Anyway we didn’t really like the guy!’
Not helpful if the current climate when every sale counts. So how do you take some of the guess work out of knowing your customer and what they want? How can you up the chances of a successful sale? The answer is a the Lifo® method based programme. By teaching your team to understand what makes the client tick means they have more chance of making a successful sale.Benefits of the Lifo® method approach come most when the organisation believes in the power of strong customer relationships and for who repeat business is a primary goal and service is viewed as a business opportunity. All sales people can benefit by understanding customer resistance and attraction characteristics. Advertising can be more highly targeted depending upon identification of customer styles involved.

1. They will learn to understand their own style in terms of:

• Strengths, excesses and vulnerabilities
  
• What's involved in success and failure re: selling products and services?
  
• Compatibility with different customer types
  

2. We’ll help them quickly understand their customer’s reactions and recognise what is needed to respond to them.

3. They will develop the ability to flex their approach to match their sales pitch to what really matters to the customer. For example

• Is the customer highly SUPPORTING in which case they will need proof of quality, warranties, and service record and company integrity.
  
• Maybe they are naturally highly CONTROLLING and need proof of what product will do for them or allow him or her to do. In this case delivery and service fast matters.
  
• If the are CONSERVING by nature you’ll need to provide facts and information on how product works, lists of options and alternatives, improvements on good and reliable products and have a proven track record.
  
• ADAPTING customers will need you to demonstrate how products and services are designed for different needs. They’ll want to know you can provide off-shelf or custom design. You might want to offer various means of payment. You’ll do best to establish a friendship with these customers.
  

4. They’ll learn how to use their time better:

• knowing what will get the sale and doing only that.
  
• not following up on poor prospects
  
• follow-up geared to customer's need
  
• assuring coverage of full line of products

5. With less difficult sales efforts and less that go sour stress levels will fall. Research says that happy teams are more successful.

6. Overall improved co-ordination and efficiency of sales-service teams leads to assured repeat business.

The Lifo® method Selling Styles survey is the basis of our approach. It takes sales team members through what are their own preferred styles and what makes them tick in normal and stressful situations. They can understand their impact on others, for good or ill and explore how they can marshall all of the styles available to them. Using the same set of behavioural descriptions they can start to understand what makes others tick to and how to press their hot buttons.

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