How to Deal with Information Imbalance in Sales

by Ben Lai | Jul 1, 2019

Transcript

Hey, it’s Ben Lai here from Sales Ethos. Today, I’m going to kick off a series on How to Sell to Modern Buyers. Part One of this series is going to be how to deal with information imbalance in today’s market.

Now, if you’ve been in sales for any length of time — 5, 10, even 20 years — you will have noticed that things have drastically changed for the industry. In the past, sales people held all of the information and intelligence. This is no longer the case. With the introduction of the internet and the availability of information, people can find out everything that they need with just a click of the button. Buyers are more well informed than ever before.

It doesn’t just go for the products. It also expands to sales techniques. With sales people constantly trying to pound their doors down, they have become aware of all the techniques that sales people use.

What do we do in this day and age of well informed buyers?

Dealing with information imbalance in sales tip #1: Know your stuff

Number one, you need to know your stuff. You need to know your product inside out. Know all of the technical features or as much as possible, but as a counterbalance, try to keep things in the big picture. That’s not to say that you cannot sell if you don’t know the technical features of your product. It is important but it is not going to stop you from selling. The main reason for this is that you can still sell the big picture when you’re selling to the client. What you’re really trying to do is to help to solve a problem. You can certainly help them to solve a problem without knowing the technical specifications. However, it adds to your credibility if you do.

In the situation where you don’t have the time or the ability to go into great depths knowing about the technical specifications of your product, what you need to do is to invite someone along to the meeting within your company to take care of that aspect.

When I was selling technical IT products, that’s was one of my key strategies. I would invite one of the engineers to join the phone call or to join the meeting and I would let them talk to the other engineer all the technical stuff. Afterwards, I would take care of the logistical aspect and the big vision aspect selling to the other stakeholders, because managers and buyers generally aren’t too concerned about details. So that’s the aspect of getting to know your stuff, knowing your product in detail.

Dealing with information imbalance in sales tip #2: Convert data into strategy

The second thing that we need to do as professional sales people is to convert data into information and convert that information into strategy. What I mean is that while all of this information is available for buyers, being able to tread through all to mess, all of the irrelevant content, and get to the stuff that’s most important or interpreting that information is where you can add an incredible amount of value to your clients.

What you need to do is to understand what’s going on in the information and in the industry and interpret that for your clients. This is where you’re adding enormous amounts of value for them and this is where they’re going to start seeing you as a trusted advisor rather than just a product vendor. Sure, they could look up everything they want on the internet but they will come to you when they need advice.

Before I go into the third point, I just want to make a quick offer. If you are a sales manager or if you have a team that reports to you that are responsible for sales, you could be an ops, you could be the CEO of your company, if you would like a complementary consultation where we will meet one-to-one for one hour, we will solve one problem, I’ll give you as much advice as a I can with regard to solving that one problem, visit the link below, send your details, and we’ll make a booking to talk about your one problem. In exchange, we will discuss the potential of using sales training to help your team to improve their performance.

Dealing with information imbalance in sales tip #3: Be authentic

Now, over to the third point. The third point on dealing with information imbalance in sales has to do with being authentic. Because people are so weary of sales techniques and being sold to, they put up their resistance as soon as they detect that you’re trying to manipulate the situation. All of the special closing techniques the worked in the past no longer are effective. Therefore, we have to be our authentic selves. Believe in what you are selling. Only do so if you genuinely believe it’s in the client’s best interests. By coming across this way, by being authentic, people will detect your sincere desire to help them out. Once they feel that, their sales resistance will go all the way down.

Finally, let’s recap. Firstly, we need to know our stuff or find someone who does and bring them along to the sales meeting. Secondly, we need to convert that information into strategy. Finally, we need to be authentic. This is how you can best sell to the modern buyer, and I’ll wrap it up there.

Feel free to comment below if you have any other ideas on how to sell to modern buyers when it comes to the information overload that they have. Don’t forget to click like and subscribe, and remember that integrity plus skills equals success.

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