Virtual Selling: NO FEATURE DUMPING

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The internet brings a lot of great things to us: virtual hangouts, online meal orders, true-crime podcasts, 5 Minute Sales Training videos, etc.

What it brings us above all is INFORMATION.

Information is power, as they say, and in that way the internet is the great equalizer.

Because older salespeople like me know that there was once a time when the salesperson had ALL the information and the customer had none of it.

That’s no longer the case. Your customers today may know more about your product than you do!

And that’s okay! It’s not your job to provide information. It’s your job to provide direction.

Here’s a recap of everything in this episode of 5 Minute Sales Training:

Imagine you are selling a pen.

A pen is loaded with features.

It’s blue. Or black.

Maybe it’s made up of 100% refined plastic.

It retracts with a click of a button.

You can chew on it, you can fidget with it, and you can even emphatically throw it on the desk to make a point.

When I started my career in sales, information was the exclusive property of the salesperson, but the internet changed all of that.

Now, information is everywhere, and it’s easily accessible.

Thank you, Google.

The easy access to plentiful amounts of information makes the customer’s life much harder.

Well, as my friend Dennis O’Neil points out in his book, Sales Actualization, the internet is a feature dumper.

And we know that feature dumping in the sales process is a bad idea.

The customer hates it, and yet today we are awash in it.

This is where great salespeople have the opportunity to create sales magic.

Great salespeople know that.

It’s about two far more important things: perspective and wisdom.

Now, the perspective is about what a product means in the context of a specific buyer.

And the wisdom is about how to influence someone to do what is already in their best interest.

What about you?

Are you still caught up in feature dumping?

Because I can tell you right now, feature dumping is always caused by the same thing — not knowing your customer well enough.

If I don’t know my customer well enough, I don’t know what to talk about.

So, I talk about features.

Instead, let the internet handle the feature dumping.

Until next time, learn more to earn more.