If you feel your competitive edge has grown a bit dull after the past season of knocking on doors, battling competition and possibly losing out on cases you pinned your hopes on, not to worry. Just realize it might be time to turn to the best benefits selling tool available to hone your edge: your customers.
To know your customers and ask for their feedback reinforces your role as advisor and benefit collaborator rather than simply a vendor. It tells your customers that you care enough to find out what they need and to respond to those needs. And knowing what your customers want can give you a better idea of what prospects want as well.
Schedule an annual review with your key customers to make plans to accomplish a series of goals:
- Identify how you worked together over the past year.
- Lay out a success plan for the coming year.
- Review your customers' benefit-related goals, objectives and strategies.
Look at your overall product and service value proposition. One goal is to identify whether your selling objectives
match your customers' buying objectives. Knowing your customers helps you identify the best ways to connect with them. Fine tune your approaches and messages regarding plan renewal and design options.
Through such a customized approach, you offer your customers far more than a standardized or "boilerplate" sales pitch. Each step you take in responding to your customers' specific needs can only deepen your business
relationships. And if there are products or services you can't find a way to offer, identify a strategic partner to provide them with you.
As a benefits selling professional, you are always building on your storehouse of knowledge. It's part of your job. Perhaps you already know about what's hot or what's next in the benefits market from magazines, trade shows and new product introductions. But what you know is really only theory until you can apply it practically. By combining your knowledge of the market with knowledge of your customers' needs, you validate your theories by seeing what's put into practice through your customers' benefits choices. With such validation under your belt, you can more confidently approach prospective customers when you can point to what has worked with your current customers.
The benefits selling environment is evolving. So you must evolve, as well. By reinforcing your knowledge with customer knowledge, you'll give yourself a competitive edge that will sharpen renewals with customers and sales with prospects.
