The biggest mistake that we see when selling Apple products is when the focus is just on hardware. When the interaction between the reseller and the customer is transactional and that transaction is solely centred around hardware. You might think why is this such a mistake when you’ve managed to successfully sell your customer the hardware they needed or that you suggested for them.
In our experience, there is so much more that has to take place before anyone can even think of suggesting a piece of hardware or software. We are going to cover exactly what needs to happen over the next couple of weeks.
When you totally understand your customer’s situation you can then make recommendations as to how you can help them fix it with much more than just hardware.
When you get to know the customer, who they are and what they do – you start to build a clear idea of what problems they face. Only when you know what their ‘pains’ are, can you then start to ask the right questions about their situation. Moving conversations from hardware and more about the customer gives you a big advantage. You then start to understand more about not only their environment but also their position in the technology investment or simply just the organisation.
You might think that this would take more time than just a straightforward selling conversation, and you would be right. But what it does do is gives you much more clarity on what the solution to their problem may be and so your not just responding to their request for a new Mac or iPad.
“The conversation could take you onto training, software, accessories, planning, migration, servers, storage and so on.”
Knowing your customer’s situation inside out gives you the ability to open the conversation up to much more than just investing in a new piece of hardware. It gives you the chance to help your customer make the right decision on a whole solution rather than just one part of it.
The beauty of selling Apple solutions is that the more you learn about how powerful the Apple ecosystem is – the more you realise what it can do for you and your customers.
Let us know if this has been useful for you and please leave us a comment on what you think. If you are already doing this then what benefits are you already seeing?
Next time lets take a closer look at how to profile customers to make it easier to ask the right questions.
Until then try out some of the suggestions in this week’s blog and let us know how you get on.
The Westcoast Apple Team
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