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Insight Selling: Surprising Research on What Sales Winners Do Differently, by Mike Schulz and John E Doerr
WHEN a context changes, so must the method for working within it. Those who are not succeeding in sales would do well to question whether they are using a method that no longer applies.
Schulz and Doerr are established sales trainers specialising in business-to-business sales. From 2012 to 2013 their company, Rain Today, surveyed 700 businesses. The aggregate purchases of these businesses was $3.1bn a year. They also interviewed in excess of 150 corporate buyers.
The results of their survey indicated clear differences between those who won the sale and those who were contenders, but did not get the sale.
Insight Selling is the authors’ analysis of this rich body of data, and describes a set of conclusions.
If you are the chief information officer of a company and realise you need to make a major investment to improve your company’s effectiveness, what would you do? As a responsible professional, you would do as much research as you could, prior to inviting sellers to give you a presentation of their offering. Your might talk to colleagues and others in your field, but you would certainly do appropriate desktop research.
By the time the buyer meets the sellers, the expectations of the meeting are considerably different to what they would have been in 1970. The seller who uses techniques that were effective 40 years ago is unlikely to be successful.
Selling moved from telling buyers what they need and giving them good reasons why they should buy to connecting the buyer’s needs to your solution. This is not a subtle shift; it represented a change in the business context.
When products were not plentiful, there was a need for a salesman (mostly male) to inform you of a new product and explain why you needed it. New products came to satisfy needs many people did not even realise they had. It became necessary for a salesperson to identify the need and connect it to their product. This is known as “solution selling”.
As business becomes even more sophisticated, so must selling.
Shulz and Doerr describe a three-part process that emerges from their comprehensive research. Their process is not the opinions of successful sellers; rather, it is an understanding of professional buyers. In fact, when the authors did research on what sellers thought was important to buyers, they found that the sellers misunderstood important issues.
The authors identified three levels in selling, and each is required to give the best chance of success.
The first level is to “Connect”. This connecting works in two dimensions. The seller is no longer required to diagnose the needs and problems the buyer has. To illustrate the difference, the authors relate a situation where a buyer sent the seller a statement of their challenges, why the challenges exist, and what they wanted from the seller in order to deal with them.
What the buyer does welcome is a demonstration by the seller of an understanding of the challenges. “It's old news that buyers have a lot more information about everything than in decades past,” stated the authors.
What the buyer prefers is that sellers focus on what the buyer aspires to achieve, rather than the problems the company experiences.
The second dimension of level 1 selling is that of the relationship. Those who assert that relationships do not matter are in error. Buyers buy from people with whom they feel comfortable. They always have, and still do.
Achieving level 1 will not get the sale. It will only put the seller “in the game”. The next two levels are required.
Level 2 is “Convince”. Sellers need to convince the buyer of the three matters.
Buyers are concerned that the investment they are making gives them a return on their investment. Buyer’s remorse in a corporate setting has consequences ranging far wider than that of a retail purchase. Also, buyers must be convinced that the risk they are taking in making the purchase is “acceptable”. No purchase is risk-free, so it is up to the seller to show how the inevitable risk falls within the ‘acceptable’ range.
Finally, the seller must convince the buyer that doing business with him “is the best choice among the available options”.
The “convincing” must be articulated; buyers cannot be presumed to know this. The seller needs to manage convincing carefully so that it does not impair the relationship element identified in level 1.
The third level, “Collaborate”, gets to the heart of the process. The authors’ research showed that winners “collaborate” far more often than those who came second.
Buyers want sellers to educate them with new ideas or perspectives. Despite the fact that they know their needs and situation, they want to feel that they have been enriched by the sales conversation.
They also need to work with the buyer so both parties bring what they can to the situation. Together they produce more than they expected.
Shulz and Doerr’s “Insight Selling” will definitely change the way you respond to requests for proposals, or present your product or services. The book’s easily accessible model is profound and valuable.
See that everyone in sales reads this.
Readability: Light ---+- Serious
Insights: High -+--- Low
Practica:l High +---- Low
- Fin24
*Ian Mann of Gateways consults internationally on leadership and strategy and is the author of Strategy that Works. Views expressed are his own.
