Are you and your team selling like winners?
In our last article we discussed paid acquisitions strategies, all the work you and your team put into marketing and securing relationships with the customer – and really working hard to identify your ideal customer and
seeking to serve them.
Well, we wanted to follow that up with a step by step infographic that can assist in setting up your sales team with a winning formula – this is focused on the customer and lists some of the key areas that customers have identified where salespeople are failing. In the customer’s words….’Failing to listen to me, understand me, provide a demonstration of a return on investment, collaborate with me, being trustworthy, making it easy to buy’.
Some list, right?
So, how are your sales and how is your team addressing these areas?
Sellers who win have distinct patterns for how they sell. There’s a specific combination of behaviours and outcomes they achieve that second-place finishers don’t. We’ve categorized and labeled these factors in the 3 Levels of a winning playbook. Winners of B2B sales do these things both more often, and better than other sales teams and more consistently.
The best performers we’ve worked with are systemised, well-drilled and hungry.
The 3 Level Playbook
What then, is the common thread between the 3 levels? It’s insight.
The sellers who win provide insight across each of the 3 levels. The most obvious way they do this is in Level 3. In fact, the #1 behaviour that separates the winners from the rest is they “educate buyers with
new ideas and perspectives”.
You can see how this can then maximise a buyer to take ownership of
the sales. Here’s a breakdown of the 3 levels and how insight applies to each:
Level 3: Collaborate
What: In B2B sales, buyers want to be educated with new ideas, and they want to be a part of creating new ideas. Your ideas are, literally, the insights you introduce in a sales conversation.
When you propose a new idea, and when you involve buyers collaboratively in the process of creating insights, you personally become a source of value over and above whatever it is that you sell.
How: Buyers are looking to achieve outcomes and find paths to success. Products/ services alone don’t get them there. Buyers need partners to help them see what’s possible and to work with them collaboratively to bring ideas to life.
When you are proactive, responsive, and easy to work with, they’ll seek insight and interaction with you. And conversely, when you are difficult, they won’t.
Level 2: Convince
Best Choice: Buyers need to make decisions among available options. Your insight throughout the B2B sales process will help them make the right choice. In this way, you as the seller add the value. This will best position buying from you as the right choice.
Maximum Return: Buyers need to make the Return On Investment (ROI) case in order to buy. They often don’t make the effort to do it, can’t do it, or don’t do it well. Your insights into the business case will help them make the right decisions for the right business reasons.
Minimum Risk: Buyers seek ROI, but often make decisions based more on fear of loss than potential for return. Your insight into what the risk is, and your insight and efforts to mitigate that risk (including building trust), will give them confidence to invest in what you sell.
Level 1: Connect
Dots: In a sea of information, buyers are looking for sellers to help them choose the right direction, select the right options, and take the right actions.
Their confidence in you grows due to your insight into them and your own knowledge of how you can help. They’ll be guided by your insight to help them make the right choice, across their buying cycle.
People: Buyers are more willing to interact with, take advice from, and be open to alternative points of view from people they like and trust. They’ll accept more insight. They’ll co-create more insight.
When you bring new ideas to the table in a B2B sales conversation and work with the buyer to develop them, you’re providing a value beyond just the service you sell, and value is the key to winning.
We have developed some excellent courses where we help your sales team build out their programs along these lines. If you want to know more, email me at nick@nextpractice.education
We are ready to help you sell like winners!
Go well and keep on scaling
Nick & The Next Practice Team
