Pattern recognition and connecting the dots are the hallmark skills of any effective consultant.
In the last few months, I’ve been brought into sales organizations that have experienced “two flat quarters” and who are looking to get back to “double-digit” growth.
The commonalities in these engagements are:
Executives who believe that the remedy to stagnating growth is to double down on the “what to do” or sales process – without due consideration to “why” or “how to do it”
Salespeople who struggle to differentiate between prospecting and selling what their products/solutions “is” vs “what it does” for their customers (Input vs Output thinking and messaging)
Clarity on the process or “what to do” is important. Don’t get me wrong. It’s just not enough. It’s an easy part of selling. If our salespeople just did this, then we would get better results. And in part it does. It only takes you so far, however.
The true distinction to drive the order of magnitude improvement sales improvement is getting clarity and emphasizing the “how to” behaviours and skills to prospect and sell at each step of the sales/buying process. This is where most executives and sales enablement fall short. Many cannot model the behaviour and skills that they are asking their salesforce to adopt at each step of the sales process.
“Our people need to sell to C level executives” is easy to say (what to do). Most salespeople don’t know “how” that looks like or sounds like (harder) because they don’t have access to leaders who can model this for them.
Secondly, salespeople struggle to let go of product/solution marketing messaging that forces them into messaging and having conversations that focus on their product/solution (Inputs) vs the outcomes (Outputs) that the customer is looking to achieve.
To be fair to salespeople, most line of business or functional buyers at potential customers also fall into the trap of thinking in Inputs vs Outputs. That’s because they’re disconnected (or are not able to connect the dots from what they do and what they are expected to deliver for their company) from the strategic imperatives of their own company – so they typically engage with sellers having already decided that the product/solution is the answer to their challenges that they’ve been tasked to solve.
The analogy that works well for this is that the seller and buyer are focused on selling and buying a ‘drill bit’, when what they really are selling is a ‘hole’. And the buyer wants that hole for a reason, they just haven’t thought through it in much detail. And each client will have a specific or unique reason. It’s the job of the seller to find and dig for that reason or motivation – making the true reason or value much, much clearer and compelling/urgent for the buyer in the process. THAT is value creation.
As a leader, are you making the mistake of focusing only on “what to do” or are you showing your salespeople “how to do it.”
Can you model what you’re asking of your salespeople? Can you guide your clients to clarity on the outcomes they are looking to have, aka a business discovery and outcome-focused conversation? Or are you keeping sellers trapped and doing your clients a disservice by only having sales or input conversations?
If you’ve been struggling with these issues for more than 30 days, it’s time to get outside help. Give me a call.