Jim Holden wrote a book called "Power Base Selling." His concept focuses on techniques that can eliminate competition and give you control of the selling environment. This methodology can help advanced salespeople as well as beginners. It focuses on relationships and build them in the sales environment.
Describe What You are Selling as Benefits to the Customer
Instead of describing the features of what you are selling, focus on how the customer can benefit. Customers are seldom interested in features; they want results that can affect their success directly. Change your focus from what you have to what they need, and you will become as much a consultant as a salesperson. The customer will come to see you as an asset instead of an adversary.
Understand Customer Politics
Learn the difference between influence and authority in your customer's world. The people they report to in the chain of command may not be the same as the people who have influence on purchasing decisions. Once you understand the politics your customer must deal with in her company, you can arm them with information about your product that can win them allies among the people who have influence. This raises your customer's status in their company and puts you in a position of enabling them to succeed and receive recognition.
Defeat Your Competition
Disarm your competition by offering to be your customer's ally. Focus on making the customer's job easier, from decision-making to getting the approval of supervisors to make purchases. Your competition may be focusing on articulating the features of its product, and by focusing on how you can make your customer more successful, you can eliminate the competition. If you try to defeat the competition by using the competition's approach, your customer will lump you in with the competition and treat you as an adversary.
Invest Your Time and Resources Efficiently
Evaluate the effort needed to break down resistance in your customer, work your way through their political contacts, and make presentations to the decision makers in the company you have targeted. Once you know the path you need to take, you can calculate the amount of time and effort a successful sale will take. You will also know what resources you will need to help you make the proper series of presentations. You will waste much less time because you know precisely where and when to focus your efforts.
