The Next Big Thing in Sales
Everybody are looking for the next big thing in sales and hottest trend in the market. Either if it is challenger sales, solution based selling or relationship based sales, it is crucial to know where we are heading for the next few years.
I personally believe Sales is the most important functions of the business. No matter what your business is all about, if it is a startup or established organization, no matter what industry you are in and no matter of you are selling to businesses or consumers, without sales, there is no business. Sales makes your business successful and lack of sales makes you fail. No brainer!
This is why everybody in sales and business are looking for ways to improve their selling power and follow the latest trends and success stories of thought leaders in this space. Historically, sales has evolved from being a volume based activity to strategic focused approach in modern digital world. Let’s have a look at different sales styles and see which one is more effective to generate net new business.
You can read this post on my blog on what is an effective framework to achieve net new revenue stream.
Consultative selling
As it is obvious from it’s name, the salesperson position themselves as a consultant in their space and look for ways to solve a business problem and not just sell. In this method, salesperson is highly knowledgeable on his/her industry and problems they are solving and will give the customer different perspective on how to look at problem and how their product or service can solve this problem and contribute to the top line or buttom line of the business. As I mentioned multiple times, this is all about the business and how customer can benefit on a high level. In this method, it does not matter what features your product has, what matters is the benefits of the solution for business problem.
Here is a deeper discussion of difference between consultative and relationship selling.
Sales enablement
Sales enablement is the process of providing sales people with all the tools they need to make the sales. Normally, this happens in B2B channel partner sales methods in which the vendor has a range of channel partners who are committed to do business with the vendor and happy to allocate resources to sell. These resources can be man power, marketing budget, leads, operations etc.
In this method, it is important to stay focused on different sales training and sales workshops for partners and keep them updated in the latest product features, win stories, business strategy, marketing messaging etc. and work with them closely to monitor their activities and results.
Solution selling
In this method, salesperson try to find an answer to a problem. It is very similar to consultative selling and again salesperson tries to find a solution for a problem that impact the business. In this context, salesperson would do discovery sessions with potential buyer and see the problem from holistic perspective and tries to find out how this problem is affecting other parts of the business as well. Not just the immediate issues, but also how the solution can benefit organisation on a long run.
I saw lot of organisations talking about implementing solution selling, but what they actually do is selling their products. If an organisation wants to move to solution selling vs. box dropping, they need to educate their sales force and re train them from technical and sales perspective on how to look at the business problems holistically and how to implement their sales process which is now based on solving business problems. Massive effort, but worth it!
Conceptual selling
Yes we all know that you have to have a sales process, great knowledge of product and services and know your target market. But how you actually going to implement this in action? Conceptual selling is all about customer interaction and control the dynamics of conversation with customer. What questions to ask and how to control the presentation meetings, how to asses buyer’s needs and how to align what seller wants vs. what buyer wants.
I have seen lot of sales people who wings it rather than following a structured plan on how to interact with potential buyers. Trust me, sometimes it is a disaster!
Transactional sales
In this method, organisation is relying on a single point of sales when interacting with customers. Customers are coming with a single problem and seller will solve the problem for a short period of time and they never see each other again. Even if this turns into future transactions, it is all based on chance and sellers normally has no plan on controlling the process.
I have seen lot of companies that are talking about other methods of selling, but what they do is actually transactional selling which is a reactive practice when it comes to solving problems. Plus, you are not using full potential of your buyers as you are not even trying to get the big picture and just relying on small piece of pie.
If organisations want to move away from this method, they should train their salespeople on how to ask smart questions from customers and build relationship with them. There are lot of work to move away from this model.
Relationship selling
Relationship based selling is the process of adding value to the sales conversation, positioning yourself as a trusted adviser, solve the business problem and continue adding value to buyer even after sales. The relationship sales, does not mean that you go out there and make friends! You earn the right to make friends after you gain trust of the buyer. If they like you, you make friends along the way.
I say organizations after organizations that had to let their relationship builders go, because they could not potentially add any value to the sales process or the buyer journey. All they do is to sit down in the office, or go out and talk to other people. talk, talk and talk! They cannot move the opportunity in the sales cycle and do not do prospecting! Two main activities of a sales person.
By the way, here is my article on how to be a world class prospector.
In contrast, those sales people who understand buyer needs, position themselves as experts and look for ways to improve performance of their prospects. And guess what happens after that; they become long last friends.
Business first.
And at last . . . Strategic selling
This is the ultimate weapon of an organisation if they want to make a massive impact to their sales performance. In this method, salesperson engage with the key decision makers way early in the sales cycle by investigating on business problems and stakeholders motives and try to connect the dots on how to solve these problems way before buyer know that they exist. Then salesperson provides insight on how this problem(s) can be solved via proposed solution. Note that in this method, salesperson has access to insider information way earlier than competition and in many cases, they already position themselves as strategic advisory and earn the right to provide the solution.
Plus, seller has the advantage to learn and speak customer’s language which adds alot of value to the sales process. Another pro is that the sales cycle can be shorten by far as the salesperson is creating the demand for the solution vs. those times that customer is looking for solutions in the market.
What you need to implement this method? Strategically branded sales people who are educated enough to engage with c-level stakeholders, know the language of the business and have delivered results engaging with the business top down and buttom up.
About Author:
Houman Asefi is world authority and visionary on B2B technology sales and startups, award finalist blogger, focusing on building and scaling sales strategy and making sure companies achieve their targeted revenue.
Contact Info: Houman Asefi
Phone Number: +61 452 219 022
Email: houman.asefi@gmail.com
Blog: http://www.houmanasefi.com/
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