It’s still a sale
While the end result to everyone concerned may be the same, as aging in place specialists, we are all about creating and providing effective services and solutions for our aging in place clients rather than making a sale and having them purchase something from us. Service and solutions versus selling.
We want people to appreciate how we can help them, to request our help, to decide what it is that we offer that they would like to have us do for them, and to tell us when they would like to engage our help. We are not interested in selling them what we think they should have because it makes us happy but in creating a solution that serves them.
We likely will ask them a series of questions and give them some direction along the way to help them decide what it is they would like for us to do with them, but we won’t be arriving at their home with a sample case or a van full of products from which should choose. Neither will we attempt to make a sale over the phone before we have determined exactly what it is they require from us.
There are so many possibilities
Additionally, there are not a finite number of aging in place services or solutions to offer and sell to a potential client. While there are various products someone can purchase to use or have installed, and those products might also be used as part of our overall design treatments for them, we are focused on solutions and not products.
Thus, we don’t need to specifically identify what we are doing as far as providing an aging in place treatment or solution or to get the client to accept a specific product or design recommendation as such. Labels aren’t required or necessary – just results, and they will be interested in our overall concept rather than just portions of it.
We just want to meet the expressed needs of the client or what we have observed as being necessary or beneficial for their space to allow them to function in it better and more effectively. We don’t have an agenda or a quota that we have to meet. We don’t have to sell so many Plan A, Plan B, or Plan C designs each month to stay in business.
Keeping the interests of the client in focus
While we may find that we really do have a Plan A because so many of the needs across the clients we meet and serve are similar and consistent, we won’t be approaching it this way. Each scope of services will be unique to the individual clients even though much of the language contained in the proposal and the pricing may be similar from job-to-job.
Many of us prefer not to think of ourselves as salespeople, having had various experiences with salespeople over the years that have left us with a low opinion of the profession. This is fine. We don’t need to think of ourselves as salespeople even though we are. We just need to be problem-solvers – problem-solvers that suggest and deliver a solution that the client agrees is necessary and appropriate. This is sales – offering them a proposed solution or treatment for what they are facing and having them agree to move forward with us at the price agreed upon.
Meeting the clients needs
Unless we have a specific product that the client can acquire from us and use, we likely are involved in a solutions-based business. That means that there is nothing to sell until we determine what the client needs and how it applies to them. Each case is different. Therefore, there can be no typical sale.
Rather than get hung up on making a sale, all we need to do is focus on meeting the needs of the client and helping them. Likely, there will be many different ways, and price points, of approaching their issues. Here, we get a chance to connect with our clients and to utilize some creativity.
Selling aging in place solutions is all about finding a need and meeting it rather than convincing someone they need what we want to provide. This approach takes all the pressure off of us because there is nothing expected in terms of an outcome except addressing what the client needs, wants, and will accept.