Win-Win Selling: A B2B Perspective
The world's greatest brands start each business year/quarter with meetings highlighting the previous year’s revenue numbers, consumer trends, market share results, and other KPI metrics.
In reality, entrepreneurs and businesses need to make significant sales to offset expenses and the general costs of offering goods and services to their customers. Many organizations have created separate departments for their sales teams. Inbound sales deal with prospects looking for products and services. Outbound sales teams (field sales) reach out to potential clients to convert them into paying customers. Whichever the case, businesses can't survive without sales—this is where customers come into the picture.
Customers aren't just a means to an end. Whenever you interact with a CEO, a company executive, or a final consumer, you are dealing with a human being with a decent understanding of right and wrong. Business dealings are rarely a one-time event; it's usually a relationship that lasts for an extended time. Therefore, knowing your potential clients and understanding what they are looking for in a business relationship is imperative.
So, why do some companies succeed and others fail? It comes down to how they approach sales. In this blog post, I will discuss a better approach toward current and potential customers - win-win selling. I will explain win-win selling, its benefits, and the top things to consider before developing a win-win strategy.
Understanding Win-Win Selling
The relationship in a competitive business environment tends to be based on win/lose outcomes. With two sides involved, it is common for one side to want to be better off than the other side. That's generally how some companies function. However, a one-sided approach to sales could have devastating outcomes in the long run.
The 2022 Loblaw and Frito-Lay pricing dispute in Canada is an excellent example of what happens when businesses fail to do due diligence in understanding what's most important to their partners. Lays experienced business interruptions and lost significant sales across Lobaw's 2400 stores.
A win-win approach emphasizes collaboration and mutual gains between businesses and customers. It's about two parties engaging in business activity, each feeling like they got what they wanted at the end of the transaction.
Getting to a win-win situation requires preparation, excellent negotiation skills, and thinking like customers. The ability to see things from the perspective of potential clients/customers sets the stage for win-win outcomes.
Benefits of Win-Win Selling
One of the benefits of adopting a win-win style is that it makes problem-solving and decision-making easier. When businesses and customers work collaboratively towards a common goal, everyone instantly gets the message.
Here are just a few of the many benefits of adopting a win-win approach:
Higher Close Rate
Customer Loyalty
Revenue Growth
Higher Close Rate
Businesses can shorten their sales cycle with a win-win approach. The key here is to focus on the customer and what they stand to gain in the deal. Keeping the focus on the customer requires asking the right questions to uncover their goals and what they look forward to achieving in doing business with your organization. You want to discover what it will take for customers and prospects to feel they are getting what they want.
It all comes down to decision-making. Decision-making is always faster when businesses structure deals in response to the customer's needs and wants. Remember that in sales, your customer's success is your success.
Customer Loyalty
As more deals get closed, the customer count automatically increases, provided churn rates are not going up simultaneously. A one-time purchase business model is only sustainable in the short run. Depending on the nature of your business, a repeat purchase model keeps the engines of a company running non-stop. Customers will keep returning to make repeat purchases, provided they feel like they are getting what they want. A win-win is a guarantee that customers will keep coming back.
Transparency and trustworthiness are among the top values shared by top-performing companies. Businesses must ensure that their policies are vividly clear. Communicating changes once they occur is a huge chunk of every company's customer relations strategy.
Revenue Growth
Businesses can attract more profitable customers with a win-win approach. Word of mouth is the most effective form of marketing. As more and more customers continue to get satisfaction from a product/service, they will keep returning to make repeat purchases. Satisfied customers will be more willing to recommend a business’s products and services to their friends and families. As customer count increases, so does revenue. The company will have exponential revenue growth as the cycle keeps repeating itself.
On the other hand, a bad experience increases the likelihood that a customer will not return, which could deter potential customers from patronizing a business. In the past, I have had people stop me from taking my car to certain automotive repair shops either because of their awful experience or just gross incompetence and negligence on the part of the shop. That's negative word of mouth at play right there.
Developing Your Win-Win Selling Strategy
Whether you are an entrepreneur, a sales professional, or a small-medium size business, you will have to go into negotiations with your stakeholders at some point. Most negotiations are revenue-focused and must be approached with care, as the outcome could seriously affect the business.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when considering a win-win strategy:
Your Business Goals
Costs & Benefits
Long-term Relationships
Your Business Goals
Understanding your goal as a business is the first thing to consider when developing your win-win strategy. What are you trying to achieve? Is it just the sales? Or are you looking to leverage the sale for other strategic partnership opportunities? You have to be clear about your goals, as this will help you determine and shape your approach.
Costs & Benefits
Costs should never exceed benefits in a typical business situation. As much as you want to achieve a win-win, you should not give up unreasonable percentages or make uncalculated concessions.
Over the years, I have seen many salespeople offer significant discounts to land a deal. Constantly offering large discounts erodes the value of your product and could have adverse financial consequences.
The greatest mistake some businesses make is targeting customers who are not the right fit for their business. Do your homework and calculations to determine if pursuing a particular customer segment is worth the effort in the first place. Understanding your customer's reservation price will help you land profitable deals and keep costs low.
Long-term Relationships
Relationships could be long-term or short-term, depending on the nature of the business. Businesses must focus on long-term relationships as opposed to quick gains in the short term. Customers invest each time they purchase, subscribe, or book a service, so it's important to nurture them. Achieving sales targets and revenue goals could become an uphill battle without repeat customers.
Win-win is possible in all kinds of sales situations. It requires preparation, excellent negotiation skills, and a solid understanding of what the client/prospect wants to get out of a business relationship.
Gain profound sales knowledge by enrolling in Absolutely Sales - an all-inclusive online course designed to help entrepreneurs, business owners, and professionals sell more effectively.
I also offer one-on-one sales coaching with two options to choose from. Book your free consultation today.
