Are you listening to your SMB clients and prospects?

Recently I’ve had a number of clients bring up the selling process to SMB prospects and clients for one reason or another. I thought this would be a good time to dole out some assistance in this venue.

There really is no such thing as a born sales person, especially in the technology solutions industry selling to the SMB space. And even more so in this day and age.

I don’t care how much of a slick talker someone thinks they are, they aren’t going to just convince anyone to buy a technology oriented service or make an equipment upgrade.

You are better off not being that “born sales person” and being more of a business person.

Although the selling process is much more difficult if you don’t have a good marketing/lead generation system, for our purposes here, I’ll assume you are generating qualified leads. This is important as it means the people entering the sales funnel don’t need to be “convinced” of the need for your services, but need to find a partner to do the job at hand.

So assuming the marketing has already taken care of the general typical client fit (correct niche, demographics, etc), need and want then the selling process must assure the fit of working together and then close the deal.

Here are a couple of pointers to not talk yourself out of a deal with your very cautious SMB prospects:

Listen more than talk. Not getting the whole story is a common mistake in solution selling and very typical in the technology solution world. When you don’t have the whole picture, you tend to open your mouth too soon and start throwing out solutions to prove your smarts. Not a good idea.

Ask for the end result from a business standpoint. If you don’t know what the prospect is actually trying to accomplish for their business, you can’t know if you are the right business partner to help them out let alone make any suggestions.

Explain your possible solutions. Once you know what the business problem is and what kind of results they need to see, you can point out what your business can do for them specifically related to their problem/needed results.

Explain your process. This is where more systems come into play. Inside of this explanation you would want to specifically tell them how each problem gets solved and how the end results will be obtained and measured. The SMB prospect is a shrewd buyer. Without explaining to them exactly how you deliver the recommended solutions and what they can expect for their investment, all you will get is a “I’ll think about it”, which is not what you want to hear.

Answer any remaining questions. Sometimes known as the “objections” portion of the process, this is where you fend off misconceptions and make sure they understand the value of your services in solving their problems.

Ask for the sale. This is a major weak point for most people, but is of a particular problem in the SMB solution industry. You don’t ask, you can’t get. By now you should have proved your companies worthiness and ability to get the job done as the prospect explained. Present the package/solution that fits what they explained to you and do it for the full value of the service while asking them when they want to get started.. If they indicate they can’t afford it, then you can worry about negotiating, but only if you can take some value away for every chunk of fee you remove. That’s an entirely different conversation though.

These are just some basics in the selling process when providing solutions to your SMB prospects. Think about recent service purchase you have made for your business or personally. Who did you end up buying from and why? The odds are it had nothing to do with price. And if you did go with the low ball, how did everything turn out?


To Your Business Success-

George Sierchio
The Consultant’s Coach