11 minute read
Fighting for Face Time
GRANT LEBOFF says solution selling no longer works and salespeople must work smarter to get in front of buyers
Fundamentally, salespeople add value when they influence or alter their prospect’s “criteria of purchase”. If potential customers know exactly what they want, however, and no conversation will alter their perception in any way, then it becomes almost impossible for a salesperson to add value.
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In fact, in this situation no actual selling takes place. Really, the salesperson here is just providing customer service. The conversation between the parties becomes a box-ticking exercise, whereby the customer ensures the salesperson’s offering can deliver everything they require. With this established, and nothing to differentiate the supplier from all the other providers that also meet the customer’s requirements, the salesperson gets hammered on price as this, inevitably, becomes the only point of difference.
This scenario is increasingly occurring in business today. Customers, with access to a wealth of online information, are completing more of the purchase journey on their own before a salesperson ever gets involved. Salespeople, if they do get to meet a customer at all, merely become extensions of the customer service department, rather than influencing the customer’s criteria of purchase.
The ready availability of information online is why salespeople are now finding it increasingly difficult to obtain face time with prospects and customers. Before the World Wide Web, it was relatively difficult for individuals to find out about products and services. They could, of course, read trade magazines, visit exhibitions and use libraries for research. However, in this environment, often the most efficient way of obtaining an understanding of a market was to call a few suppliers and have meetings with their salespeople. After three or four conversations, a prospect would have a much clearer idea of what was available.
Today, it is often quicker and more efficient for potential purchasers to undertake research online for themselves. This can be done in their own time and convenience. With the perception that all the information that they require is available on the Internet, why would they invite salespeople into their office? In other words, salespeople need to ask themselves, “Why should a prospect give me any face time whatsoever?” Right now, there are too many salespeople who do not have a compelling answer to this question.
The ramifications of this situation are that it is now essential for salespeople to undertake more of their prospecting on the Web. After all, salespeople have always needed to hang out in the same places as their prospects and customers. Today, this is increasingly on digital platforms. Building a reputation and presence online will not only enable a salesperson to get involved with a prospect’s purchase journey at the right time, it will also go some way to providing a reason why a prospect may want to meet them in person. BENEFIT SELLING To grasp the approach required from salespeople today, it is essential to understand how the sales process has evolved. We used to live in a product economy. That is, in the main, people simply bought products. There was very little service industry to speak of. In relative terms, we inhabited a world with limited choice in most sectors of the market. Moreover, people were tied into using local suppliers. For most, it was not easy to access products outside a local area, while sourcing them overseas was prohibitive in both time and money costs in all but the rarest of circumstances.
In this environment, salespeople were taught to “sell the benefits” of their products. Benefit selling gave customers enough of a reason why they should buy. In a less competitive world than the one we inhabit today, and where markets moved much more slowly than they do now, selling benefits alone could provide enough difference to make a particular offering compelling. Moreover, prospects had little access to information, so much of their knowledge about what was available came from salespeople. If selling has always been about altering a prospect’s criteria of purchase, salespeople achieved this in a product economy simply by explaining the benefits of their offering. SOLUTION SELLING As the Western industrialised world became richer, products started to become commoditised. It became increasingly difficult for companies to differentiate the benefits of their merchandise. Therefore, businesses started to offer additional services around their products in order to achieve differentiation. For example, retailers that found themselves selling exactly the same stock as competitors began offering extras such as extended warranties, money back guarantees and free delivery. In the world of technology, IBM, unable to differentiate its products as it had previously, very publicly repositioned itself as a service provider.
In this way we became a service-led economy. In this environment, benefit selling became a blunt technique. Services did not necessarily offer one single set of benefits that suited every customer. Selling an intangible service gave salespeople the opportunity to tailor a package to fit a particular individual’s requirements – hence the introduction of solution, consultative or SPIN selling.
In solution selling, salespeople sought to question a prospect in order to understand their challenges and requirements. Once a salesperson had a good comprehension of their prospect’s situation, they could make sensible recommendations and tailor their service offering accordingly. In a world before the Web it was not easy for customers to learn about all the nuances involved in the delivery of particular services, so salespeople could add real value once they had a proper understanding of their customer. By making suggestions of which a customer was previously unaware, salespeople provided increased value and altered their prospect’s criteria of purchase by providing them with possibilities that they had never previously considered. OUT WITH THE OLD Quite simply, the Web has put paid to much of this solution selling approach. Today, it is services themselves that have become commoditised. There is little to differentiate most service offerings anymore. Moreover, with services, there is nothing a business can offer that cannot immediately be copied by the competition. With access to all the information they need, customers can now undertake their own diagnosis and produce their own set of solutions.
In this scenario, if a salesperson goes into a meeting and runs through the diagnosis that solution selling requires, the customer is likely to get frustrated. Unlike in previous eras, this is likely to be a process that the prospect has already undertaken for themselves. Therefore, the whole mechanism becomes mundane and unenlightening. Quite simply, customers no longer want to have the “solution selling” conversation because it has no worth for them.
Value is not neutral. If a salesperson goes into a meeting and adds value, they will be more credible when they leave. By the same token, if they fail to provide value, they will be deemed less credible. This diminishes the salesperson’s chances of then winning the business. If they do win the deal, it is likely to be on price. This might occur in a situation where the prospect receives no value from any of the salespeople and, therefore, focuses on the one point of difference they can understand.
It is not just access to knowledge that has rendered solution selling less effective than it was previously. Benefit selling worked in a product economy. Solution selling was useful in a service economy. But now we are leaving the service economy behind. First, services – like products before them – have become commoditised. Second, the Web is changing consumer behaviour.
THE EXPERIENCE ECONOMY The dominant leisure activity in the western world used to be watching TV. The phrase “couch potato” referred to the fact that this was a passive activity, where we mindlessly absorbed the programmes coming at us from the screen. But no one has coined the phrase “web potato”. Although, from a physical point of view, going online is still a sedentary activity, from a mental standpoint it is much more active than watching TV. When online, we click, we search, we comment, we play. In a world where every individual owns their own powerful media channels, we are also learning that our opinions matter. All this means we are now entering the “experience economy”.
Whereas, a service is done to you, an experience is done with you. So, for example, a football match has always been an experience. This is because the sense of occasion is not merely delivered by the star players and managers turning up. It also requires a stadium full of fans. If all the famous players appeared but no fans came to the stadium there would be no sense of occasion. Even a TV broadcast would not be as good without the supporters at the game. In other words, as followers of a team, the football match is not done to you but with you. A fan is an integral part of the occasion, not separate from it.
In an experience economy, companies differentiate less by what they do and more by how they do it and for whom. In other words, differentiation comes from the tailored experience they provide for a particular marketplace, rather than some product features or service deliverables.
In an experience economy, where salespeople are selling products and services similar to their competitors, it is the sales experience that differentiates both the salesperson and the offering. In other words it is not what you sell but how you sell it that matters.
But the fundamental of sales has not changed. As in previous eras, in order to add value, salespeople need to alter their prospect’s criteria of purchase. Simply explaining benefits or selling solutions will no longer achieve this. INSIGHT SELLING Today, salespeople need to provide “insight” to their prospects. By insight I mean an “aha” moment. The brief period that makes someone stop and think; the moment when they hear a consideration or view that they were previously unaware of. This could be a profound new insight, or it could be a small detail. By providing new insights, a salesperson disrupts their prospect’s thinking. It forces them to reconsider their criteria of purchase, which is when “real selling” can take place and genuine value can be added.
When a prospect feels they have all the bases SELLING IS NOT DEAD YET It is now common parlance in sales as a blanket assertion that all buyers and marketing circles that 57% are likely to be in this position, and of a typical business-to-business so there should be fundamental purchase decision is made before a changes to sales and marketing customer even talks to a supplier. processes. In fact, the figure has The figure comes from research by gradually crept higher and the the Corporate Executive Board, and number of buyers who are a long also informed the now famous book, way forward in their purchasing The Challenger Sale, in which it is decision is now routinely touted as used by the authors to pronounce being 60-70%. the “death of solution selling”. It has put the frighteners on a lot of Here’s what they said in a Harvard salespeople, who think they have to Business Review blog post: beat prospects in the race to “A recent Corporate Executive settling on their needs, as so many Board study of more than 1,400 B2B look to be doing so, or give up and customers found that those start trying to service customers customers completed, on average, who have largely made up their nearly 60% of a typical purchasing minds. Meanwhile companies had decision – researching solutions, better be ramping up their digital ranking options, setting marketing strategies to maximise requirements, benchmarking pricing, the chances of buyers preferring and so on – before even having a their offerings. conversation with a supplier. In this But does this picture tell the whole world the celebrated ‘solution sales story? It way well do so in relatively rep’ can be more of an annoyance simple transactional deals, but many than an asset. Customers in an array experts challenge this notion that of industries, from IT to insurance to prospects are merrily pressing on business process outsourcing, are without salesperson engagement, often way ahead of the salespeople at least in more complex B2B who are ‘helping’ them.” situations. Further exploration of Now, there are two key words here both sides of the argument can be and they are ‘on average’. The found in the November/December problem is that many people have 2014 edition of Winning Edge. taken the 57% figure and applied it Marc Beishon
GRANT LEBOFF is a writer, speaker and strategist on sales and marketing and CEO of consultancy Sticky Marketing Club. His fourth book, Digital Selling, is published by Kogan Page. Visit: www.stickymarketing.com covered, and that they have done their research, even a small disruption can have a positive effect. In this scenario, a salesperson is perceived as adding value. This means providing prospects with real insights. While the offering may be similar to others, the insight can make an invaluable difference. Customers in this scenario are not buying what you do but how it is delivered. It is the experience of working with the business that is valuable and sets the offering apart from the competition.
Delivering insight is not easy. In many ways, it makes selling a more strategic discipline than in previous generations. Insight should come from the experts within an organisation. It should also emerge from senior management and the board. Marketing can also work on research and strive to provide insights. Meanwhile, today’s successful salespeople need to be truly knowledgeable with regard to both the products and services they offer and the markets in which they work.
Gone are the days of salespeople paying lip service to being industry experts and consultants. In the digital world, this has become a reality.
