A little bit about Solution Selling – Peer-level Relationship

Today I spent time with my team, watching Linkedin Learning on “Solution Selling” together. My teammates are quite young, some of them are first timer in sales.

In #solutionselling , we focus on customer’s objectives and goals. This is the most important thing in solution selling – understand our customer’s objectives and goals, and help provide the solution. We do not sell based on features or price.

How to do this? By having conversations with the client, and ask questions to focus the conversation. 

After each segment of videos, we discuss what do we understand from the video, and also share about related areas.

One of the things we learned is about peer-level relationship. When we discuss with our clients, we need to establish peer-level relationship, which means we are at the same level with them. We cannot put ourselves as too big compared to them, or too small. This is so that the discussion on both sides can flow better, and we do not tend to just agree to everything the customer said just to gain the sales.

As a young sales team members, my teammates often feels small when they enter a room with a big organization to discuss how OfficeCentral can help them. So, we discuss why this happen and how to improve them.

Picture: Sometimes we feel so small, like the cat ^_^

Why? Some of the items that my teammates shared include:
– Low confidence
– Feel not on the same level (usually the bosses are the ones who join the meeting)
– Feel not enough knowledge

Next, we discuss how to overcome these.

Some of the brainstorm ideas we got included the following:

Mindset. First and foremost, we need to correct our mindset. Sometimes we probably meet the prospect with a wrong mindset – we want to sell them something. When we meet with a prospect, we are actually bringing value to them. We want to help them possibly identify their known or even unknown problems, and help to provide solution to them. We have something that they want – value.

Grooming. The way we present ourselves will give impression to our clients. And also to our own confidence. By ensuring that we groom ourselves to the higher level, it will help to boost confidence, and give good impression to our prospect. One of the easiest way to do this is by wearing blazer when attending meeting with prospects.

Knowledge development. Apart from the trainings provided by the company, the sales team should regularly explore the system to increase their product knowledge, read, and keep their knowledge up to date by reading the market trend. Even if some people don’t like to read, they can still watch thousands of videos available online. Time investment is required. Money investment? Not so much. But if you would like to invest your money for knowledge – that’s great! At Authentic Venture Sdn Bhd, we even provide mini library full of books that will help the team increase knowledge. So they should take advantage of that.

Preparation. Preparation before the meeting such as looking up about the organization, understand their business, prepare the questions we would like to ask during the meeting, all of these will help us to feel more confident when entering a meeting with a prospect.

All of the above may sound simple, you likely know about those too. So, now you already know about it, you need to do it.

Do you have ideas to overcome these issues? Share with us by commenting below!

5 reasons why internship is important

Are you a student? Are you currently going through your internship program or thinking to join an internship program?

One thing that I observe, and someone has taught me this too previously, is that when you are a students, all the stress that you undergo such as studying, preparing for exams, etc, is not as big as it seemed once you enter the real working world, especially once you assume more responsibility such as taking care of your family – even more so once you are married.

This is the same as when you undergo your internship program. If you are too stressed out or depressed during the internship duration, that is a sign that you’re not managing your time and stress well enough.

5 reasons why internship program is important to a student (of course, besides getting a pass in the course):

1. This is the time to actually discover your interests

You might think you like what you’re doing or going to do while you were in the university, but it might be a totally different world out there. University’s main point is to teach you how to communicate, think and bring yourself in the real world. Probably not so much on the work hands-on type of experience. Internship program allows you to have a hands-on experience in the area that you are assigned in.

2. Learn to communicate with your colleagues and superiors

Communications between friends, colleagues and superiors might be different depending on the situation(s). This is where you learn how to communicate and express your thoughts and ideas.

3. Learn to manage your time

Trust me, if you think you have too much things to do as an intern, you might not be managing your time well. So if you feel this, it is time to learn and improve your time management skills.

4. Learn to manage your stress

There is almost no company/organization in the world that you can work at that will have absolutely no pressure or stress. Sometimes stress can be a good motivator for you to complete your job.

The most important part is you have to manage your stress and learn how do you de-stress and motivate yourself to achieve more.

5. Opportunity to build your network

Take this opportunity to develop your network in the industry. Get to know people. For your information, besides you learning about the company and the mechanics of business, the company is also learning about you.

If you work hard, successfully give good impression during your internship program and get to know a lot of people whether your company’s employees or customers/suppliers, there’s a very high chance for you to secure employment / other opportunities in the future. And this goes a loooong way.

In the Ventures Internship Program that we have at our company, Authentic Venture Sdn Bhd, we learned a lot about each students that join us. Some of them actually take the good opportunity to learn more and have achieved quite good results in the program. However some also struggled and probably need more guidance in understanding the mechanism and benefits that they get from internship program.

At Authentic Venture, we provide a lot of trainings, learning opportunities and networking opportunities with other companies’ management and CEOs. It really boils down to the interns themselves to make full use of the opportunities provided.

Are you interested in our internship program? Feel free to send your resume to careers@ventures.com.my. Thank you!