Are you focusing on selling the wrong thing?  If you are, you are not alone as the majority of salespeople focus on selling the wrong thing.  In addition, senior executives in companies encourage their own salespeople to focus on selling the wrong thing.  In fact these senior executives even give their marketing departments large amounts of money to spend on producing marketing materials which focus on selling the wrong thing.  This focus on selling the wrong thing is an epidemic.

Focusing on selling the wrong thing has a significant impact on your sales results:  it repels prospects; it lengthens the sales cycle and often results in lost sales.  So what is the wrong thing?

You are focusing on selling the wrong thing if you are focusing on selling your products and services. 

You see, if you focus on selling your products and services, you will have a sales conversation where several of the following will happen:

1.  Your sales conversations are going to be focused on you and not your prospect.  Your sales conversations are going to be about you: your products and your services. Your conversations are going to come across as "me-me-me" conversations and "me-me-me" conversations naturally and automatically repel people.

2. Your prospects are going to lose interest very quickly as they probably won't be able to immediately determine what's in it for them i.e. what relevant problem your products and services solve.  Once your prospect has lost interest they will probably move on and the sale is lost. 

3. Your prospects are going to feel overwhelmed and confused with all the primarily irrelevant information you are flooding them with about your products and services.  Overwhelmed prospects do one of two things:  nothing or they delay making a decision.  Either way a sale is either lost or, if you are lucky, simply delayed.

4. Your prospect will not trust themselves to make a decision. They will not trust themselves to understand all the information you are overloading them with about your products and services. They will also not trust themselves to determine if in fact your products and services can solve their problem. They may even bring in a third party - a consultant - to help them.   Either way the sale will take longer than it need be - assuming they are still interested.

So instead of focusing on selling your products and services what do you focus on?

You simply focus on selling what your prospect wants to buy. It really is that simple.

Your prospect wants to buy a solution to their problem.  Hence, if your prospect wants to buy a solution to their problem, it makes sense to focus your sales conversation on their problem. Your products and services then ONLY come into the conversation when you get to the part of the sales conversation where you explain 'how' you solve their problem.   Your products and services only play a supporting role in the sales conversation (versus the leading role.)

By changing the focus of your sales conversation to the prospects problem several of the following things will happen:

1. Your sales conversations will be focused on your prospect and not on you.  Just by changing your conversations from a "me-me-me" focus to a focus on them, you will naturally and automatically attract prospects.

2. Your prospects are going to be interested  as you are going to come across as wanting to help them solve their problem. People are naturally and automatically interested in people who can help them solve their problems.

3. Your prospects are not going to feel overwhelmed or confused as you are not going to be overwhelming them with irrelevant information about your products and services.  You'll only eventually be telling them about your products and services to the extent they solve their  problem. 

4. Your prospects will start to trust themselves to make a decision.   During the sales conversation you will help them understand their problem and its impact on them and their business.  You will  help them understand the connection between the problem they have and how the specific aspects of your products and services can solve it. With this clear understanding, they will trust themselves more to make the right decision.

So, as you see from the above, if in your sales conversations you are focusing on your products and services you are focusing on selling the wrong thing.  As a result you will repel prospects, increase the time it takes to make a sale and lose a lot of sales.   So start today by focusing your sales conversation on what your prospects want to buy: a solution to their problem.

(c) 2008 Tessa Stowe, Sales Conversation.  WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEBSITE? Yes, you can, provided you make all links live and include this copyright and by-line below.

Tessa Stowe teaches small business owners and recovering salespeople 10 simple steps to turn conversations into clients without being sales-y or pushy. Sign-up for her FREE monthly newsletter that is full of tips on how to sell your services by just being yourself at http://www.salesconversation.com