Richardson's Selling With Insights eBook

Our latest thinking on helping your people win more through insight selling

Copyright © 2014 Richardson. All rights reserved.


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eBOOK 1 | SELLING WITH INSIGHTS: THE WHY AND HOW OF APPROACHING INFORMED BUYERS WITH INSIGHT

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Buyers are doing their research, and traditional sellers are getting left behind. It is tempting to throw your hands up in defeat and simply respond reactively to the opportunities your customers give you. This approach puts too much of your fate in the hands of your marketing team and can drive intense price competition. Sellers need to engage informed buyers differently. To avoid commoditization, rather than simply respond, sellers must create and shape opportunities.

Shaping opportunities requires the seller to change the way the customer thinks about their needs or a solution to the seller’s advantage. It is most applicable when the customer is far along in their buying cycle and has already formed a concept for what they want or need. Shaping the opportunity requires the sales rep to disrupt the customer’s thinking so that they take a few steps back and reconsider the need or solution. Through building trust and credibility, and through sharing relevant insight based on credible research or experience, the seller challenges the buyer to think through what’s wrong or what’s missing in their prescribed approach. Shaping opportunities creates a win-win because it helps mitigatecompetition and price sensitivity for the seller while resulting in a better solution for your customer.

Creating opportunities requires the seller to make the customer aware of a new issue or opportunity or raise the sense of urgency of an issue to act sooner. This is most applicable when the customer is very early in — or not even in — their buying process. The sales rep that engages the customer at this level is trying to provoke a need rather than responding to a request. As in the shape mode, sales reps must build trust and credibility and share relevant insight based on credible research or experience. By doing this, the seller challenges the buyer to think through the risks of not prioritizing and accelerating an initiative. Creating opportunities creates a win-win because it helps mitigate competition and price sensitivity for the seller while helping the customer move forward on an initiative to help them make money, save money, or manage risk.

EFFECTIVE UTILIZATION OF INSIGHTSAs mentioned above, creating and shaping opportunities requires the sales rep to leverage insight to challenge the customer’s mindset. Insight is information or ideas that are based on credible research, authoritative content, or relevant experiences and are tailored to a buyer’s challenges and opportunities. When shared, it encourages the buyer to think about their needs in a new way, showing them a path to solve a challenge or capitalize on an opportunity by leveraging the capabilities and differentiators offered by the seller.



eBOOK 1 | SELLING WITH INSIGHTS: THE WHY AND HOW OF APPROACHING INFORMED BUYERS WITH INSIGHT

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SELLING WITH INSIGHTS: TECHNIQUES TO MODERNIZE YOUR SALES FORCETwenty years ago, a sales rep met with customers to tell them about their products, and all they needed was polished marketing materials and an enthusiastic sales pitch. In most cases, buyers didn’t have access to other information unless it came from other sales reps with a similar approach. If they were impressed or persuaded, there was a good chance that they would buy from you with little additional input or process.

Times have now changed. Remember, buyers may be as far as 60% through their buying process before they contact a sales rep.* To overcome the four challenges driven by changing buyer behavior, you must approach informed buyers with insight that adds value to the conversation. Sales reps need to transform their approach by anticipating buyer behaviors, offering compelling insights, and tailoring solutions to specific customer needs. Training sales reps to respond to changes in buyer behaviors is the best way to guarantee that you don’t end up in a race to the bottom.


*CEB


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eBOOK 2 | PLEASE SHUT UP. I AM TRYING TO SHARE AN INSIGHT.

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We have numerous conversations with sales leaders wanting to adopt an insight-led approach to selling. Through these conversations, it is very clear that there is confusion over how insights come to life in a sales situation. Some of the people with whom we’ve spoke have the impression that an insight is communicated through a presentation. We believe that there may be situations where that is the case, but the more likely case will be for an insight to be communicated in a sales conversation. This is important not only because a sales conversation requires a different skill set but also because it requires a different mindset.

Let’s run through an example to see how all of this plays out.Say, for example, your R&D group discovers some breakthrough innovation that gives you this unbelievable capability to solve a difficult challenge for your customers far better than your competition. Excited by the potential, you have your marketing team produce a slick PowerPoint deck and take time to train your sales reps to deliver the commercial teaching pitch. Then, you issue adirective to line up appointments with your customers to close some business. So far so good, right?

THE REAL CHALLENGE TAKES PLACE FACE-TO-FACEIN FRONT OF THE CUSTOMERYou’ve prepared your sales reps to deliver a presentation — a silver bullet shot straight to the heart (or mind) of the customer. A presentation that is so insightful and compelling that once delivered, your customer will take out his or her pen, sign on the dotted line, and cut a check on the spot.

Seriously? Does this ever happen? Probably not, unless you sell all-purpose steak knives at the mall that can hack through an old leather shoe and a beer can and then cut a tomato like a hot knife through butter! In reality, your buyer will have questions andpossibly doubts about your point of view. As buyers, the notion of someone trying to “sell” to us puts us on the defensive.

We live in an age of content marketing overload, and we’re skeptical from being carpet bombed with self-serving thought leadership. However, we also know the importance of staying well-informed in a competitive and rapidly changing market. Every decision is scrutinized.

We have doubts, we have questions, and we have our own thoughts and opinions about issues related to our business. And, when we hear a thought-provoking idea, especially a novel one, we need time to process and internalize the concept before we buy in completely.

This doesn’t mean that your sellers can’t trigger new thinking or ideas, build credibility, add value, and eventually sell something, but sellers must be sensitive to how buyers process information, manage through resistance, and keep the buyer tracking with their point of view.




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SHUT UP AND LISTEN, WILL YA? “Telling isn’t teaching” is a popular phrase in the world of learning and development that insight sellers should take to heart. When you train your sellers to deliver insight through a presentation-led approach, you risk putting them into a “telling” mindset. Being in that frame of mind exposes the seller to two significant risks. The first risk is that they are so focused on delivering their pitch that they miss signals that the buyer has questions or isn’t tracking with them. Sales reps might shut down a buyer in the critical early stages of their commercial teaching pitch, effectively asking them to shut up

for 20 minutes until they finish talking. This is extremely annoying for the buyer and very detrimental for the seller who fails to keep the buyer tracking with their thinking. The second risk is that the insight isn’t very insightful for the buyer. Again, the seller is so focused on delivering the pitch that they assume that what they have to say will be of interest to the buyer. At no point does the seller check with the buyer for validity or support. It creates an awkward situation when the buyer shuts down the seller halfway through their teaching pitch because they have some experience or opinion that does not support the seller’s point of view.




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WHEN YOU THINK “INSIGHT,” THINKCONVERSATIONS, NOT PRESENTATIONS

It is helpful to think of a customer conversation as a pendulum,and through the course of the conversation, the pendulum swings between asking questions, listening, and sharing insight. There are times in that conversation where you will want to lead with questions, such as when you need to sell understanding or seek confirmation. Then, there are times in the conversation where you lead with an insight, such as when you want to seed new ideas or influence thinking. And of course, it is necessary to listen for both verbal and nonverbal cues. Sellers must draw on the right skills at the right time, depending on what you know (or don’t know) and how the buyer responds through the discussion. When the opportunity presents itself to position an insight, we believe that the seller should first start by floating the issue to the buyer and then by checking with an open-ended question to test for support. For example, the seller could say something like, “Here’s a challenge that we’ve seen with clients similar to you. What have you considered so

far to address this challenge?” Then, if the buyer responds favorably, the seller can dive deeper into their insight, continuing to check along the way to ensure that the buyer is tracking and addressing questions or concerns along the way. This conversational approach has many advantages over presenting a canned commercial teaching pitch. First, it gives the seller an early out if the concept won’t fly with thebuyer. There are many reasons why a buyer might not even entertain your idea, so why waste valuable time trying to push that issue? Second, checking along the way helps the seller keep the buyer on track with new thinking. Finally, by asking questions, the seller gathers more and better information from the buyer. This enables the seller to tailor the delivery of the insight message for even more relevance as the conversation evolves.

As buyers become better informed and better prepared, competition becomes more intense, and sellers need more skill than ever to succeed. Presentations have their place in the sales process, but insights are best shared through conversations.



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eBOOK 3 | IMPROvE YOUR SALES EFFECTIvENESS WITH INSIGHT AND DIALOGUE

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Selling with insight is all the rage now. As Brian Fetherstonhaugh of OgilvyOne has alluded, selling needs to evolve because buyer behavior has fundamentally changed. While the impacts of this are felt differently and more deeply in some industries and verticals than others (context and nuance always matter), the need for most selling organizations to evolve is clear.

We get it, too, and designed our Richardson’s Selling with Insights® program to help clients make this shift. Unless you want to get caught at the end of the buying process in a fiercely competitive battle for the business, where buyers have pre-decided solution options (fraught with their own bias and possible misconceptions) and with Procurement doing their best to commoditize you into a price war, it’s time to do something differently.

ANOTHER NEW KILLER SALES SKILL Enter insight. A timely approach, given the era of Big Data, right? Selling with insights is not new … it’s been done successfully in professional services for years and used elsewhere and very successfully by top-performing sales reps— think the top 20% of the top 20%. What we’ve really done is create an insight methodology that is replicable and that can be scaled across a sales organization without requiring sales reps to become something they’re not or to start challenging their prospects and clients.




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A VIEW INTO DÉjÀ VUAt one of our current employers, the very top sales reps used their knowledge gained from experience and perspective gained through research to completely reframe how customers saw an issue to offer an innovative solution to a common challenge. It was a stunningly brilliant and customer-oriented approach that yielded great results.

Did these sales reps challenge their customers? Did they go in swinging with their insights and bludgeon clients or try to shock them with their brilliance?

Sorry to disappoint, perhaps, but not a chance. They actually worked hard to AVOID shocking their clients and reduce the risk of walking into a surprise jab. Dave Brock has written about the dangers of selling with insight here. One of his examples says, “Pit a 25 year-old enterprise software sales rep against a 47-year old, battle-worn CIO, and have that rep ‘challenge’ the CIO about how he sees his business, and see how well that works out for the rep.” Greg Alexander of Sales Benchmark Index wrote about one of his unfortunate experiences shadowing a Challenger rep, here. It’s ugly. These are extreme examples, but unfortunately, we frequently hear that companies struggle to operationalize an insight-led approach.

In contrast, the sales rep mentioned earlier used a very educational, respectful approach. There were times when they did share information and insights outright (and did it with confidence and presence, completely without arrogance), but there were just as many times where they led their clients to a new realization through questions, leading an open dialogue. In the room, you could see the gears turning in their prospects’

heads … they’d lean forward, brows wrinkled, heads tilted,

questions leaked out, and sometimes, a few objections or resistance. But you could literally see them thinking. At the end, you could always see the proverbial light bulb go off over their heads. It was a process but was always very respectful and engaged the client at every step. The sales reps led the client to a new understanding and new solution for an old problem, which provided bigger benefits at a similar or reduced price. At the end of the dialogue, it was such a no-brainer for customers to buy, that most did. Did everyone “get it” and buy exactly what the sales rep recommended? Of course not. It was a pretty radical departure from what others were doing. But, it worked more often than not for these top producers, and we didn’t see or hear about sales reps being tossed out for challenging customers, either. In the calls that were observed, clients went out of their way to thank the sales reps for helping them see things differently.

YUP. IT’S STILL AbOUT DIALOGUE. It’s probably no surprise to those who have followed Richardson for a while that we believe that selling is still all about having an effective dialogue. Sure, there are times when you lead with insight versus questions because the changes in buyer behavior demand it to get in early, cut through the clutter, or build credibility and differentiate yourself. But, at the end of the day, once you capture their attention, gain their interest, and hopefully orchestrate an Aha Moment, it’s the dialogue that takes it home from there (and honestly, even our insight-led models incorporate dialogue within the models).




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WHAT MAKES THIS WORK? There is no single defining moment but rather a series of steps and skills that, when combined, completely shift the approach and increase the effectiveness. • Pick a capability you want to support with insight. The

capability must address a significant challenge or enablea considerable opportunity for your clients.

• Find or gather your research, data, case studies, white papers,and experience gained from knowledge, which either increasesthe weight of the challenge/opportunity or helps clarify thesolution you offer as the best approach. Not every Aha Momenthas to be earth-shattering, but the more you can bring a surpriseto the table or a perspective that could help someone see theissue or solution differently, the better. (You can see that someadvance thinking or research may need to go into this step.)

• Develop an Insight Blueprint™ to codify and capture the thinkingaround the Challenge/Opportunity, the Insights, the Capabilities/Differentiators, and more. This is the source document where theinformation and logic path are contained.

• Use the information in the Blueprint source document, combinedwith what you know about a prospect’s or client’s real situation,to personalize an Insight Message (we have a model for this).In this stage, you need to think about how you can position theInsight to influence the client’s thinking or help them see thingsin a new way.

• Deliver your Insight Message in the context of a dialogueor sales conversation.

All of this must be done well to improve sales performance and increase win rates, but it’s that last bullet where the magic happens. We teach sales reps to identify what stage the decision maker is at in their Buying Process to identify the appropriate Selling Mode (where you Create, Shape, or Respond to opportunities). Then, we teach dialogue models that will get the best results for each mode and teach sales reps how to plug their Insight Message into the dialogue. This is where strong dialogue skills come into play, such as the Six Critical Skills and others taught in our foundational Consultative Selling Skills course. This is so much more than just “making a pitch” or a presentation. This is an influential, ethical, respectful dialogue between business professionals.

Is that easy? No. Is this different than what most sales reps typically do? By far. Can you just hold a training event and hope for change? Hardly— you know better. Done with mastery and

sustained throughout the period of culture and behavior change, can it transform your company’s sales effectiveness? Yes, it can. This is what the very top sales reps in some industries have been doing for years. Now, the changes in buying behavior are pushing many more of us in this direction.



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eBOOK 4 | 9 COMMON TRAPS OF SELLING WITH INSIGHTS AND HOW TO AvOID THEM

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Selling with insights successfully should markedly separate you from your competition. This more sophisticated sales tactic goes well beyond the transactional approach (or lack of approach) of “We sell widgets; how many can I put you down for?” to one that is more meaningful and substantive to both the buyer and seller.

Demonstrating thoughtful knowledge of your client’s business and industry by highlighting a concern or opportunity that they may be unaware of (or lack an appreciation for its magnitude) takes time and effort that will hopefully be rewarded. As is true with most things, there are risks to avoid when selling with insights. If you fail to heed these traps, you might not only risk the sale but also your reputation and relationship with the client.

What shouldn’t you do when selling with insights? We’ve identified nine common traps of selling with insights.

1. Preparation TrapWhat it is: Neglecting to put in the time to fully personalize your insight to your client. Insights that are personalized will be more relevant, more compelling, and more effective. You don’t want to be seen as an imposter or as someone who simply doesn’t know what they’re talking about. It’s okay that you’re not an expert in your client’s business— after all, it’s their business, not yours— but you need to demonstrate a mastery of the insight as it pertains to their business, industry, and competition and be able to show how it impacts their bottom line.

Ways to avoid it: Not taking the time to prepare for complex selling situations is a known reason for failure. Take the time when identifying an insight to research your client, their industry, and their top

competitors. Include industry and trade magazines as sources for trends and data. If you don’t find much about your chosen insight, perhaps you should switch topics because third-party sources are necessary to validate your claims.

2. Paralysis-by-Analysis TrapWhat it is: This is the opposite of the Preparation Trap. If selling with insights is new to you, you may have an urge to be perfect or over-prepared. Do not use this as an excuse to stall. Perfection is not required.

As mentioned above, you don’t need to become an expert in your client’s business. But, you need to be knowledgeable about the issues and the magnitude of the insight and be able to connect those dots to your client’s needs or opportunities and how you can help. You need to know enough to tee up a sales meeting, not lead a PhD-level course on the matter.

Ways to avoid it: Review and understand your insight. Research the client to personalize your insight message to the situation and to the needs of the individual you are speaking with. Succinctly articulate the challenges or opportunities with impacts and needs in plain English. Share how you can help, and show the value they can gain. If you do that with a personalized message and deliver it with sincerity, you will already be much more effective than most salespeople.

But, don’t get so bogged down in detail, research, or striving for perfection to the point that you stall or avoid the opportunity to deliver your insight message.




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3. Credibility TrapWhat it is: Being unable to answer specific questions from the client related to the insight. This is related to the Preparation Trap, but it specifically refers to knowledge about the insights that you are using. It especially applies to research and data, but it could also apply to an internal case study. If you cannot answer basic questions about the research, article, case study, or insight source, you can lose credibility quickly.

For the insight, don’t presume to apply a catchy headline you saw to raise an issue that you’ve done no research on. Likewise, you might identify a really good insight that’s perfectly relevant to your client— but which you’re underqualified to resolve. Make sure you set yourself up to be included in the solution!

Ways to avoid it: Know your insight. Whether it is an article, research study, case study, or something else, read all the source information. Unless you are in the science or research sector, you will not often be asked for research study protocols, for example, but be able to discuss the source information beyond just quoting an abstract piece of data.

4. Arrogance TrapWhat it is: You can come off as arrogant when leading with ideas too strongly without proper positioning and dialogue skills. Respectfully providing information to shed new light on a topic amid the course of a conversation is one thing, but “challenging” someone’s thinking is quite another. Relationship and people skills, as well as people’s feelings, still matter greatly.

Ways to avoid it: Check that chip on your shoulder at the door. If you find that you’re not being understood or getting your point across, pause to come

up with an alternate way to make your point without being argumentative. There are critical selling and dialogue skills to be applied along with simple courtesy, respect, and manners. You do not need to agree with everyone or everything, and you can provide new information or differing points of view. But, it is often best done through dialogue with finesse. Preparation and practice will help you do that.

5. Dialogue TrapWhat it is: This trap focuses on how you share the insight, specifically on delivering insights outside of a dialogue model. You should use an insight to capture attention, lead a dialogue, and create or shape opportunities. Helping someone see things in a new light is a guided discovery process, not a hammer in search of a nail. Richardson’s Insight Message Model fits into other dialogues and provides context, as well as a platform through which to tell a story, make a connection, engage your client, and create a meaningful conversation. Don’t throw away a valuable opportunity by just tossing out data or information. At that point, your attempt to shock or impress is no longer worthy of being called an “insight.”

Ways to avoid it: The same tactics described above that will reduce the chance of being perceived as arrogant or bullying will help here. Don’t deliver a diatribe or presentation— rather, foster dialogue. There will be times when your client needs or wants you to “spit it out,” but even then, you will want to prepare and follow the prescribed path forward. You must realize that sometimes, the best way from start to finish isn’t the most direct route, which has you speeding past points of interest that are critical to helping you build your case. Be patient, and tell the story that fully lays out the issue, what’s at stake for your client, and how you can help through a dialogue.




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6. Insight Objection TrapWhat it is: Being unprepared to respond to and resolve objections regarding your insight. Since the insight is the critical connector between the client’s challenge and your capabilities, it makes sense to prepare for any specific objections you can anticipate. If you do not have success with your insight or cannot resolve concerns about the information, you could lose credibility and will certainly need to resort to another insight (if one is relevant) or switch your approach.

Ways to avoid it: As you develop the insight, think about possible objections that can be raised along the way. They could be obvious or seemingly unrelated, but you should prepare to respond honestly and avoid being dismissive. Show that you’ve already thought of that concern and have a viable resolution. This shows that you’re thorough, prepared, and that you understand their business. If an unforeseen objection is raised, respond as best as possible with the notion that you might need to get back to them to provide the best answer.

You may not always have a perfect answer, but how you respond to objections can raise your profile or knock you down.

7. Relevance TrapWhat it is: Trying to position an insight that is not relevant to the client’s specific business situation. It can be difficult to recover from this trap once you succumb to it.

Ways to avoid it: Avoid this by examining the challenges and opportunities you’ve identified to ensure that they sync with the situation you believe your client is facing. This links directly to the first trap of being sufficiently

prepared. When preparing the insight, look for recent headlines from and about your target client to ensure that they haven’t already dealt with the issue or somehow announced a change of focus that might alter the impact and relevance of your insight. Therefore, you should review the potential impacts and possible needs in light of each client. The closer the connection between the generic information and your client’s situation, the better the chance that your insight will be relevant and resonate with them.

8. Connection TrapWhat it is: Another trap can arise when a relevant insight is positioned to the client, but it does not coherently link the client’s challenging issue or opportunity to how you can help them (your capabilities). It is important to think about the connection from both a personal and organizational level for your client. While an insight may be relevant for the client organization overall, your contact’s focus may be on a different area (e.g., an insight about stock prices may not be effective on a manufacturing-based contact). This is similar to the Relevance Trap, but that trap is primarily about the insight. In this trap, your client is unable to see a clear connection, which is why personalization and word choice is important. Put another way, an insight focused on the importance of a marketing automation system could be perfect for the company but may need to be pitched very differently to the heads of marketing vs. IT. Ways to avoid it: In crafting your personalized insight message, ensure that there is a clear link between the issue or challenge (which you check at the beginning of the conversation), your insight (which you connect to the issue), and your proposed action and value (which should solve the issue). The stronger this “dotted-line connection” or “breadcrumb trail,” the more compelling and effective your insight will be.




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9. Product Trap What it is: Engaging in a feature or product dump. While it is important to connect the issue or opportunity to your capabilities and differentiators, they must be positioned carefully to avoid sounding like a product dump. This dialogue is about them, not you. Ways to avoid it: There is a difference between discussing a specific capability or the value you have delivered to others who were in a similar situation and talking about specific features and benefits. It’s certainly okay to briefly mention a product or service name in how you describe your action and value (your capability), but it is the action and the outcome that will be compelling, not facts and figures about your products. Avoid a product or feature dump where you rattle off multiple features and benefits. Focus your conversation on the issue at hand, the relevant insight, and the corresponding capability that will address their issue.

ConclusionThere is no shortage of concerns to be aware of when selling with insights. But, as was mentioned in the previous post, the rewards can be worth the risk. By embracing selling with insights and doing it well, you open yourself up to more substantial rewards through more sophisticated sales while elevating yourself from vendor or supplier to trusted partner in the eyes of your clients. If successful, perhaps your greatest challenge could be to avoid the dreaded “sophomore slump.” That is, when your next sales opportunity arises with an insight client, you can’t retreat back to widget sales tactics. Rather, you must be keen to look for more insights and present them in a meaningful and compelling way that builds on your earlier project and experience.



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eBOOK 5 | 6 STEPS TO ENABLE YOUR SALES TEAM TO: SELL WITH INSIGHT

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So, what does this all mean for a company, its sales force, and its ability to compete? Here are six steps to leverage “insightselling” to help your team engage buyers early in their process and shape a solution that gives you the best odds of winning.

ONE: UNDERSTAND THE FORCES DRIVING YOUR CUSTOMERS TO CHANGEChanging external forces, such as new technology, competition, or regulatory requirements, as well as internal forces, such as new leadership or strategic initiatives, drives organizations to change. Whether driven by external or internal factors, change creates opportunities for providers who can help companies navigate the change. To be successful, you and your sales team must stay on top of the latest trends so that you can guide your clients to capitalize on those that are worthwhile and steer them clear of pitfalls that they should avoid.

TWO: DETERMINE HOW YOUR ORGANIZATION CAN UNIQUELY ENAbLE THESE CHANGE IMPERATIVESThis requires you to reframe your value proposition to address the change your buyers face. You need to determine how you can help them navigate the change process, the benefits they will realize, and the investment (e.g., financial, emotional, or time) required on their part for success.

It’s not enough to be able to say, “We’ve been in this business for 50 years.” That can make you sound old and stale. What have you done lately? Can you demonstrate to prospects that you and your people are at the cutting edge? What makes you better than other companies offering the same service?

THREE: PROACTIVELY EDUCATE THE bUYER ON THE CHANGE IMPERATIVE AND SOLUTION OPTIONSBe a source of knowledge and insight to raise awareness of the issues driving change and potential solutions to navigate the change. This happens both at a macro level in marketing through research and thought leadership programs and at a micro level by helping your sales reps identify prospects in flux and engage in an insightful dialogue around the issue and potential solutions.

Remember our premise above: buyers are more educated and better prepared than ever before. This gives you an opportunity in your marketing to provide research, thought leadership, and practical case studies addressing common issues so that as buyers are getting educated on the matter, you’re already on their radar.

However, don’t assume that your customer is aware of the need or how to solve these challenges. External forces, such as regulatory change or technological innovations, may not be front-page news in the mainstream media.

Your organization has to keep its finger on the pulse of the forces that create need for your solutions. You need to help your sales team connect the dots between the emerging challenge and your ability to help. Savvy buyers will be skeptical of following the latest trends, and rightly so. It’s up to you to help them realize what trends to pursue and which to avoid.




Helpful tips to use insights that provide more value to customers and win more deals

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What’s the best way to do this? There’s a lot of debate around whether your sales reps should lead with questions or with insights. Much of this depends on your prospect and their level of familiarity with the issue. Sometimes, prospects won’t know what they don’t know, and other times, they will know more than you do. It’s important not to patronize your prospects or speak over their heads. As such, we believe that it is best to either phrase your insight as a question (“How have you prepared to deal with issue XYZ?”) or to state your insight and follow up immediately with a question (“Many organizations we work with have done ABC because of XY&Z; have you considered that concept?”).

FOUR: PROACTIVELY EDUCATE THE bUYER ON HOW YOUR SOLUTION IS TYPICALLY bOUGHT AND SOLDYou sell your solutions every day, but your buyers may only buy a solution to a problem once in a lifetime. You need to tell them how to buy and why it is beneficial to them. This will surface other players in the buying organization who influence the decision and who need to be on board with the solution.

There is some recent thinking on the usefulness of asking questions to better understand the buying process. We believe that not asking these questions is a lost opportunity. The mutual sharing of information around the buying and selling process with prospects that you’ve motivated to change will help you avoid missing key influencers in the sale and help you refine your value proposition to address their unique concerns.

Chances are that what you’re selling will have a greater impact in your clients’ organizations than your buyers’ immediate business unit. Explore with your buyers the “ripple effect” throughout their organization, and use that as an opportunity to engage influencers in those areas.

FIVE: ENSURE THAT YOUR SALES REPS HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS TO EDUCATE CLIENTS,POSITION YOUR VALUE PROPOSITION, AND COVER THEIR bASES ON A COMPLEX SALEWith so much information available on the internet, it is easy for you to assume that your sales reps are following developments in their field and can confidently engage in business discussions with buyers. While your sales reps may all be active consumers of industry news, this is seldom sufficient. The biggest risk is that they will misrepresent the issue or your company’s solution or exaggerate the benefits in their enthusiasm to win business.

You need to provide your sales reps with your company’s position on the issue, solution guidelines, and expected benefits. This should be a collaborative activity with your marketing and product teams. Insight selling works most efficiently when your marketing team works on the front end by doing the research on the issue, market, competition, and thought leadership while your product team creates the roadmap and pricing policies.



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Then, you need to arm your sales reps with this material. Teach them to communicate your value proposition to different buying influencers involved in the decision-making process and the process to advance the sale to closure.

SIX: REINFORCE AND SUSTAIN “INSIGHT SELLING” AS A KEY STRATEGIC INITIATIVE

Even after you’ve done your positioning, solution preparation, and training, you need to continually reinforce the behavior change necessary among your sales reps to realize the full benefit of insight selling. Don’t think of this as a sales training or marketing initiative — it is really a strategic initiative that requires alignment across your organization.

It requires awareness of the issues, value proposition, and solution from top to bottom. The business needs to make the investment in thought leadership, refining solutions, and marketing. In order for the behavior to stick, each level in the sales organization has a responsibility to “own” their part of the process: • Sales leadership needs to make the investment in sales rep and

management development and have the discipline to establish metrics and measure the progress and impact of the initiative.

• Sales managers need to invest in their own continuous learning about the issues, build their ability to coach sales reps in this new selling paradigm, and hold their sales reps accountable for the right activity and effectiveness.

• And of course, sales reps need to embrace a new way of thinking, continuously build their ability to share insights, and engaging customers in business conversations.



Contact the Richardson Team at 215.940.9255 visit us on the web at www.richardson.com

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