If you believe the hype around studies that say customers feel they are through 60 percent (or more) of the buying cycle before engaging a salesperson, you could be giving your salespeople the wrong content for the wrong conversation. That’s because salespeople still see themselves as relevant to the early-stage discussions.
My company, Corporate Visions, recently surveyed more than 700 business-to-business marketers and salespeople from around the world regarding their level of confidence when it comes to having key customer conversations. The results unearthed a clear disconnect between where salespeople feel the most pressure in the sales cycle, and how well their companies prepare them to face these tough messaging moments.
Most challenging conversations
Nearly 40 percent of respondents identified “opportunity creation” conversations as the most important for influencing quota attainment, but only 50 percent felt adequately prepared to create new sales opportunities with the content and training available to them.
The rankings showed a fairly even split among the remaining conversation types:
- Creating opportunities from status quo – 38 percent
- Having effective executive conversations – 16 percent
- Achieving successful competitive differentiation – 14 percent
- Showcasing compelling product presentations – 13 percent
- Demonstrating financial justification – 10 percent
- Mastering purchasing negotiations – 9 percent
Least challenging conversations
On the flipside, salespeople say they feel the most prepared for low-impact conversations, including:
- Conversations that involve product presentations – 63 percent feel prepared/13 percent value most
- Conversations that establish competitive differentiation – 54 percent feel prepared/14 percent value most
Given that a large share of companies focus their marketing messaging and training initiatives on product presentations and competitive differentiation, it isn’t surprising that this is where salespeople feel the most confident and prepared. However, marketing organizations need to look to those areas where salespeople lack the confidence to successfully have productive conversations with customers, including messages, tools and training, to help move prospects off the status quo and have more effective executive conversations.
Opportunity creation playbook
Here’s one solid idea for helping your salespeople where they need it most. Build an “opportunity creation playbook.” Provide specific content for this part of the customer conversation, whether it’s for a new market segment, new product launch or strategic go-to-market initiative. The contents of an opportunity creation playbook could include:
Defining the status quo: How are most prospects doing business today? What tools, processes and people are in place to accomplish this task? Why and when did they make this decision?
Showing the gaps and deficiencies: What changes, challenges, emerging trends, issues, problems or potential missed opportunities are creating risk for their objectives? Why can’t they fix, resolve or respond with their current status quo?
Describing the change: What new needs and requirements are emerging that their status quo isn’t equipped to deal with? What unconsidered, under-valued, unknown or unmet needs must be prioritized and included in a buying checklist?
Aligning your solution: Show precisely how your solution resolves the risks you’ve exposed in the status quo. Clearly demonstrate the contrast that differentiates your offering from the status quo and competitive alternatives.
Demonstrating the business impact: Speak to the business and financial results of the business change. Which of your client’s strategic objectives will be improved when these new risks are resolved? What parts of their “money flow” will be positively impacted?
Sharing a story with contrast:
Present clear before and after stories of similar customers who were living in the same status quo and made the decision to change, choose you and now are experiencing success.
This probably doesn’t sound like your typical playbook content for supporting selling conversations. That’s because, if you’re like most everyone else, you’ve been building solution presentations or product-centric selling tools. But, the majority of the prospects your salespeople encounter are not convinced they need to change yet. Supporting your field representatives with the messaging, tools and skills to create more opportunities will benefit them and your company.
