Many sales experts agree: it is the age of insight selling.
Long outmoded are sales techniques that deal only with clever pitching; today a buyer at a prospect company is far more educated and mere pitches are likely to fall on deaf ears. A salesperson must bring unique value to the table if a prospect is going to pay any attention at all.
What does this mean? It means a salesperson must educate and enlighten the prospect. You must provide unique insight as to why yours would be the solution to their issues.
Asking Questions
But before you can provide such insight, you need to know what kind of education and insight the prospect may already have. To know that, you need to ask some probing questions of your prospect—either through online research or by direct contact, or a combination of both.
What is motivating them to inquire about your product? Why do they need it? How are they planning on implementing it? Answers will demonstrate to you their level of understanding on what you can do for them, and why your solution would work. Most importantly it will also reveal holes in their understanding that you can fill in with insight.
Another vital piece of information you will need to uncover is: how have they solved this issue or these issues in the past? What worked about it, and what didn’t work? Answers here will provide a clear avenue for a presentation of insight specific to their situation.
Discover also their concept of your product or service’s full impact on their company. It has obvious benefits for a core group of users—but what other ramifications are there? This is another place you can fill in missing insight.
This is a step that is often missed by sales forces; they just assume they already know the answers. But the time taken is well worth the reward to both you and the prospect company.
Tailoring and Providing Insight
Once you have answers to questions such as those above, you can then tailor the insight provided to the prospect company.
There are differing ways to couch your insight that are dependent on the nature of your solution. For example, you can characterize your solution as new, different or ground-breaking. But be careful of that approach—it is quite overused and shouldn’t be taken unless it is really provable and believable.
The most reliable way to present your insight is to be straight and factual. Demonstrate to your prospect how and why your solution is key to their operation, without exaggeration and a minimum of marketing-speak. Utilize examples of how your product or service solved similar issues in other companies with similar situations. When it is possible and appropriate, loop these companies into the conversation so that your prospect actually gets the straight information.
Other Channels
While this education and insight should certainly be provided by sales reps themselves, it can and should also be disseminated through other communication channels. These would include presentations, emails, webinars, white papers and every other sales and marketing vehicle. In fact every communication with a prospect is an opportunity to push that education further along; don’t waste it.
Utilize Your CRM Solution Throughout
It is imperative that you dutifully record all data discovered about a prospect company within CRM, and then exactly how that information is being utilized. In order for that to work, you need a leading-edge CRM application that is logically and intuitively deployed so that all data is rapidly accessible by anyone needing it. The right CRM solution is the last element in a well-oiled insight sales machine.
Today’s sales techniques are all about insight selling. Learn them well, and send your sales through the roof.
Make sure you have a CRM solution that fully supports your insight selling sales techniques. Get your free trial of Pipeliner CRM now.
