Customer Perception is Everything, Not Your Salespeople’s Beliefs
Selected Research by Erica Shultz of Rain Group
Mike’s Note: Rain Group has produced some very interesting research on the perception gaps found between salespeople and their customers. The research should cause every sales manager to investigate how big are the perception gaps between their customers and salespeople. I have summarized the key findings here and I make suggestions on how you can close these sales competency gaps with your salespeople. If you wish to view the full research report that Erica has compiled, you may download it here.
1. Communicating Value
Rain Research: 44% of sales and enablement leaders say the percentage of opportunities lost to no decision has increased. 22% of sales and enablement leaders say losing to competitors has increased.
Mike’s Insight: Salespeople may be good at demonstrating the features of their products or services, but poor at linking customer’s needs for value in a way that solves customer business issues across finance, productivity, image, safety, order, and service. Customers buy value that satisfy needs. Focus sales coaching on getting your salespeople uncovering needs that can be satisfied by your product benefits not just features.
2. Bringing Ideas to Buyers
Rain Research: Educating buyers with new ideas and perspectives is the #1 difference between sales winners and second-place finishers. To win, sellers need to shape ideas and inspire changes that can benefit the buyer’s business. In fact, buyers are 3x more royal to sellers who proactively bring opportunities to their attention.
Mike’s Insight: Agreed! Successful salespeople are creative problem solvers that have gained the customer trust to collaborate on exploring new ideas to facilitate positive change that support customer success. I believe in many cases this is requires changing your salespeople’s attitudes to be helpful, proactive to take risks, and be a “story telling teacher” that does his/her market and industry research to find new ways to support customer success and can get customer buy in to listen and explore. No need for your salespeople to be innovators, but possibly become early adopters of new industry trends. Create leading KPI’s for your sales team and coaches that stimulate research and creativity.
3. Leading Through Needs Discoveries
Rain Research: Most sellers come to buyers with a pre-planned pitch, make assumptions about what the buyers is saying, don’t go deep enough in their questioning, or only hear what they want to hear.
Mike’s Insights: This a classic age old problem that most sales managers have yet to solve. Jeffrey Gitomer says “If you can’t ask good questions, you will never be a successful salesperson.” Being able to ask questions, navigate customer business discussions with thoughtful probing strategies is crucial to uncover customer needs mentioned in point one. Knowing what questions to ask can also be correlated to point 2: if your salespeople are not motivated to do research on market and industry trends, they will find it difficult to have discussions with their customer that bring new ideas and create new value solutions to the business discussion. Our ELAvate Selling Against the Competition Workshop and Sales Coaching Consulting effectively minimizes this problem.
4. Negotiation Deals
Rain Research: Buyers are 1.5x more likely than sellers to receive extremely effective negotiation training. This plays out in negotiations with sellers at a clear disadvantage.
Mike’s Insights: How true! Erica has hit a real nail on the head here! Over and over when I consult with sales organizations, I see two problems: first, great successful salespeople who have mastered points 1,2 and 3 usually are able to build customer trust that leads to higher levels of collaboration reducing tougher procurement led negotiations and deals close faster with less focus on price. Secondly, the majority of sales people do not proactively plan and prepare for sales negotiations. Their overconfidence on how well they influence and negotiate can lead to poor deals and failed outcomes. The ELAvate Sales Negotiation Skills workshop and detailed negotiation planner can solve this problem when sales managers also have a leading KPI that measures how often and how completely do they coach and audit how well their salespeople prepare for negotiations. I also ask you sales managers, when is the last time you observed or participated in a customer negotiation?
5. Making the ROI Case
Rain Research: The perception GAP here is wide. Sellers believe they’re doing something right that buyers just don’t see. Even in B2B, buyers buy with their hearts and justify with their heads. You can’t only come with numbers; you must paint a picture of what’s possible—what their jobs and lives will look like after working with you—and it must be believable.
Mike’s Insights: I love collaborating with buyers who are interested and even challenge me to demonstrate a tangible ROI for my proposed solution. Having a strong utilitarian yet helpful motivation to establish and prove ROI with customers will normally lead to better win-win deals. Remember ROI does not just mean increasing financial or productivity gains or decreasing costs. ROI can have different “calculations” for different members of the buying committee: protecting or improving image value, reducing risk and upping security, Improving processes, and possibly protecting or improving internal or external relationships. You need to hire and train salespeople who have a strong penchant to conceptualize these kids of ROI and the ability to present the case for ROI to different stakeholders. The first step may be to use assessments that measure motivations and analytical abilities of your salespeople. ELAvate has a number Sales Assessments that do this. Then develop personal plans for the unique personalities of each salesperson to develop their “ROI – EQ.”
Wrap up: The 5 perception gaps that Erica of Rain Group has uncovered are very perceptive. Getting your salespeople to close these gaps will require your sales coaches to conduct insightful analysis followed by persistent training and coaching that moves beyond selling skill and product knowledge training. You may also rejig your hiring process to hire potential salespeople that are motivated to close these gaps between themselves and their customers.
Email or call me if you wish to discuss further at no obligation.
Michael J Griffin
CEO ELAvate
Global Sales Productivity Consultant
One who Enjoys Research, Innovation and ROI
michael.griffin@elavateglobal.com
HP and WhatsApp +65-91194008
Research for this article was sourced from the Rain Group study https://shorturl.at/5gZkk