When you sell commodities through simple transactions, especially in a business to consumer environment, you can get away with individual silos in your company, called Sales, Marketing and Customer Service. However, when you're selling high-ticket solutions business to business with 10-plus decision-makers on the buyer's side, then the buying-selling dynamic changes. And it changes quite drastically.
You can no longer have individual fiefdoms fighting for their own individual glory. You need an integrated business development machine that works as smoothly as a baby's arse, accurately as a Swiss watch and effectively as Stephen Covey explains in his books. And here I don't mean the $10 Chinese Tag Heuer imitation you can pick up at your local flea market and dies on you within a week. You need one department that seamlessly integrates marketing, sales and client support.
You need three components in an integrated business development department...
The business development people are to manage five processes in the client's life...
And by "managing" I don't mean controlling the situation using traditional manipulative approaches and scumbaggy closing techniques. What I mean is a step-by-step process of helping prospects walk through your sales funnel with the option of dropping out if they wish to.
And all five steps are highly collaborative. In the high-ticket sales process everything is done jointly with the potential client.
High ticket items are perceived and purchased differently from competitively priced commodities.
Traditional manipulative sales techniques (Create the pain -> make it hurt -> overcome objections -> Close, close, close) must be replaced with methods similar to what doctors use.
Have you noticed that doctors don't sell? That they don't handle objections? That they don't close? Have you also noticed that doctors don't struggle to gain patient's commitment? It's all part of their "selling" process. And what is doctors' selling process? Diagnosis. Some 50% of a doctor's education is dedicated to mastering diagnostic skills.
Traditional selling is about...
5% to qualify the prospect
15% to discover needs
35% to present the solution to fill needs
45% to overcome objections and manipulate prospects to hand over the money as soon as possible
In the big-ticket, premium-selling world the process is about...
10% to jointly discover whether or not there is a fit between buyer and seller
40% to jointly diagnose the buyer's current situation and the cost of living with the problem
35% to jointly design the best possible solution
15% to jointly deliver the designed solution
As you can see, the high-ticket world is a collaborative world, and you have to approach it from a drastically different perspective. And as you can see, there is battle with objections, no closing, but there is 100% client commitment. Your business development department becomes the proverbial medical clinic.
Here is one more consideration.
In the mid 1990s 3,000 decision-makers were researched about how much they trusted the salespeople they have purchased some complex, high ticket bits and bobs from in the last 24 months. A whopping 61% said they trusted the salesperson "rarely or not at all." And these are the responses of clients about the salespeople from whom they actually decided to buy!
The mistake lies in the fact that many companies believe that it is their offers that define whether or not it's a commodity. And that is wrong. The deciding factor is not what you sell but how you sell it. Both the $200 Nike and the $20 running shoes at Wal-Mart are running shoes. Their prices are drastically different due to the manner they are presented to the public and sold. Just see how Rhône-Poulenc branded sand. Hm.
And it's up to you how you present your merchandise to your marketplace. It's in your hand whether you sell a cheap commodity or a high-ticket premium solution.
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