Sales Talk
People Buy Outcomes
When prospects visit a model home, they weigh the price compared with their perceived value of the home. In other words, prospects are asking themselves, "Is this worth what they are asking for it?"
The diagrams illustrate how price and value might be perceived in a customer's mind. In diagram A, shown below, the price is perceived to be greater than the value received. It seems heavy on price and light on value.
The result? No sale.
If, however, price equals value in a prospect's mind, the purchase is a fair exchange. Although in this case making a sale is not certain, it is possible.
The result? Possible sale.
A sale only becomes a certainty where value far outweighs price as in Diagram C. In those cases, salespeople should have no difficulty closing.
The result? Sale. Value drives an urgency to buy.
Obviously, you want your salespeople to position your homes in the minds of prospects as tremendous values 100 percent of the time, but often, that does not happen. Why? It happens when salespeople do not sell benefits. They don't sell the outcomes their customers want.
Why salespeople don't sell benefits
Sales trainers have long preached the value of selling benefits. Books have been written on the importance of discussing benefits when presenting features. If you ask most experienced salespeople, they will admit it is key to effective demonstrations. Then why don't most sales people sell benefits? I believe they make one or both of these assumptions:
- The prospect knows the product benefits. (This may be or may not be true, depending on the product.)
- The prospect is not thinking about product benefits while interacting with the salesperson.
Both assumptions can lessen the impact of sales presentations? and the second one can be fatal!
Prospects generally do not know products benefits. And because the instances when they do know are rare, salespeople must not assume they do.
Make sure the benefits you present are the ones that are meaningful to your prospects. How do you know which ones will resonate with them? Make sure the benefits you cover focus on the key buying criteria revealed as they answer your well designed questions.
For example, it does no good to point out how close to work their new home would be if they currently live the same distance from work. But if you detect a yearning for closet space, it makes perfect sense to sell the size and number of closets and to paint a word picture of your prospect enjoying all that extra closet space.
Beyond the obvious
So far, everything said has been fairly obvious. Now it's time to look below the surface of an encounter between a salesperson and a prospect, (whether that prospect is a man, a woman or a couple). Buying a house is a very emotional process for everyone. As prospects tour models, they may be sorting through highly personal thoughts and memories. They may be personalizing the house - trying it on to see how it fits as they would a new item of clothing.
They may be fantasizing about giving a party in the house or imagining how friends may think of them as they walk through the front door of their new house for the first time. They might be recalling past experiences - both good and bad - with other homes they have lived in, visited or heard about from friends or family.
Salespeople who don't have rapport with prospects cannot begin to tap into the highly charged, personal worlds of their emotions. Salespeople who don't know how to ask well formed questions cannot use their prospects' answers to sell the deep-seated emotional outcomes people often want out from a house purchase but can hardly begin to put into words.
This type of selling is well beyond typical feature-benefits. It is the world of deeply held and shared emotions, in which a salesperson who attains rapport with a customer can build substantial value in the prospect's mind, discussing the outcomes most important to the prospect. Ultimately, what people buy is outcomes.
Bob Hafer's work in the homebuilding industry includes consulting, management, administration, sales, marketing, merchandising, research and sales training. He has been a speaker and panel member at numerous NAHB conventions, an active member of the Institute of Residential Marketing, chairman of the Dallas Sales and Marketing Council in 2001, and the McSAM chairman for the Dallas Homebuilders Association in 2002.
