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By Sergio G Vera.-

 

Customers are using publicly available information to diagnose their own needs and turning to sophisticated procurement departments and third-party purchasing consultants to help them extract the best possible deals from suppliers. Customers have become skilled at finding their own solutions and that they do not need reps as they once did. In this environment, a group of high-performing salespeople have emerge. These are among several findings Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, and Nicholas Toman present in the article ¨The End of Solutions Sales¨, demonstrating why traditional solution selling is coming to an end.

According to the article, star sales rep look for agile organization that have emerging demands, search for unrecognized needs, engage before the customer has pinpointed a problem, offer provocative insight (disruptive thinking and challenging points of view) about what the customer should do, seek out stakeholders who are skeptical change agents (instead of friendly informants) and coach the customer on how to buy from them.

Insight based selling is also supported by the findings shared by The Sales Executive Council which states that, customers start contacting suppliers by the time 60% of their due diligence process has been completed – this is, needs have been well-scoped, priorities set, requirements largely defined, solutions compared and prices benchmarked.

In this new environment is essential for star sales reps to bring insight into sales conversation and act as challengers by pushing customers outside their comfort zone and by bringing a provocative point of view that can upend customers’ current practices. Instead of leading the discussion with the technical benefits of their products, star reps should focus the conversation on the business benefits of their solutions.

Besides entering in the buying process when the customer is learning, star reps engage with Mobilizers inside the customer’s organization, who are looking for outside experts to share insights and disruptive ideas about what their company should do.

Getting the sales rep act as challenger requires organizational capabilities as well as individual skills. While sales people need to be comfortable with the tension inherent in a teaching-oriented sales conversation, sales and marketing leader must create teachable insight for them to deliver in the first place.

When handled skillfully, those insight guide the conversation toward areas where the supplier outperforms its competitors.

Sources:
• The end of Solutions Sales by Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, and Nicholas Toman, Harvard Business Review, July-August, 2012.
• Sales Executive Council, The Era of Insight Selling, Nov. 16, 2012.