Selling to Businesses: How to Turn a Comparison Shopper into Your Best Sales Person
If you’re selling products or services to businesses, there are likely numerous decision makers involved in the buying process and each one has to be sold on the idea (or at least not completely against it) for the purchase to happen.
What normally happens is that one person is responsible for handle a specific problem. That problem could be anything from getting more traffic to the website to picking out new office furniture. That person then goes off to research the various options and then present the findings to the rest of the decision making group.
Once the person responsible for the task is sold on your business, they then shift from the role of the skeptical comparison shopper to the role of the advocate that defends their choice.
Does your website make it easy for the decision maker to present features, benefits, and critical information to the decision making group?
I was once tasked to architect a website for an office furniture company. Knowing that there would likely be many decision makers involved in any purchase, I designed a wish listĀ type feature where the inside advocate could save items in a place that displayed images, product info, prices, and any other type of information that decision makers might need in order to approve the sale.
The list was printer friendly and linkable, so that the list could be emailed or passed around to decision-makers at a meeting. Designing the website this way made it easy for the inside advocate to look organized and professional in front of their peers and superiors.
You want to make it as easy as possible for the inside advocate to sell your products and services to management and executives. Some other ways to do this are:
- Create PDF’s that are downloadable and printer-friendly and that list features and benefits in a logical and visually appealing way.
- Create an industry-specific calculator that allows the researcher to plug in specific numbers in order to calculate cost savings or potential profit
- Offer a printer-friendly comparison list chart of your company vs. your competitors or competing technologies
Happy selling!
