Selling in These Challenging Times with Keith Rozelle, The Sales Marvel

Join me for my conversation with Sales Marvel, Keith Rozelle, on Selling in these Challenging Times.

Keith mentors Business Owners, Sales Professionals and Entrepreneurial Students to win more customers. He creates highly effective sales strategies for his clients and is a globally experienced sales leader – both as a Director setting strategy and also as an individual contributor selling complex solutions. Keith has worked at C-level level for many years across a broad range of sectors including Financial Services, Agri-food, Hospitality, IT/Telecoms and Higher Education.

Much of Keith’s professional experience has been in Technology, Outsourcing Services and Education.

He also has substantial international business experience, having lived and worked in the US, Europe and the Far East.

Keith is a visiting lecturer at Aston University and believes that selling is an art, science and craft that should be valued more as a profession.

We all need to be able to sell, but not everyone is comfortable selling – often because of fear of rejection.

People today want to choose to buy – they don’t want to be sold to. The power is with the customer. Product and service differentiation is really important because it means that the choice will be made on factors beyond simply price.

 In this episode, we discuss:

• How to sell in challenging times, and why it’s important to take different approaches as people experience different stages of the change curve.
• Sales being about P2P - people-to-people – not B2B or B2C.
• The need to find a new way to trade that will help us move forward in this situation and the potential future process of ‘cocooning’ even once the lockdown has passed.
• There is a broad diversity of how people have been affected by the current Covid-19 outbreak.
• That a good deal of TV advertising has adapted its messaging to sell in an appropriate way right now.
• Whether it’s a good idea or not to drop prices or discount.
• The importance of protecting existing revenue and getting the business onto as sustainable a footing as possible for the next few months.
• How to start selling successfully with more confidence.
• How to see objections as requests for more information instead of a rejection.
• The importance of not forcing the sales cycle onto the buyer – instead adapt the sales cycle to what works for the business.

 

Key to surviving and thriving is making sure that products and services are differentiated in ways that are relevant to target customers.

For small businesses, the business owner or leader may be the key differentiator.

Keith shares a sales process in the Covid-19 context and references the Zyman Pyramid to explain moving from a ‘me too’ provider competing on price to becoming a preferred provider by truly understanding and responding to customers’ needs and building customer trust. Be crystal clear about your value proposition, says Keith, and he points out that all this is true in other, less anxious times too.

Co-creation with customers is much less likely to lead to rejection as the customer has been integral to the process of developing the solution.

Ultimately, sales is about communicating how you can solve your customer’s problem – and it’s essential to keep going and help your customers solve their challenges, as well as protecting your business.

To contact Keith, email him at keith@salesmarvel.co.uk , or you can find him here on LinkedIn.

To attend one of Keith’s free webinars find out more here.