For the past few months, Salesmetry has been conducting weekly interviews with executives of B2B companies. The conversation focuses on the changes recently implemented to improve the performance of sales teams in a new context, or those that should be implemented.
One of the recurring points during these interviews is the complexity of the way products and services are presented. Too often, what is highlighted today is more about the technical features than about the benefit and comfort that the customer could get from them. Too often, offers are drowned in complicated descriptions that even some sales people find difficult to explain rather than clearly stating what problems they solve.
Whether products or services, salespeople need to be able to state the value proposition simply so that it can be understood effortlessly. To do this, 6 rules need to be respected:
- Audience segmentation. Beyond a solid definition of the Target Addressable Market, prospects must be segmented into homogeneous groups in order to build a sales approach centred on their characteristics, their expectations and their daily life. It is by questioning the same type of customer every day around the same theme that we improve every day,
- Having an in-depth knowledge of the business of prospects, of the problems generally encountered and knowledge of their causes, of the solutions most often implemented and of the constraints associated with them are at the heart of the job of a sales representative: to understand what user experience means or requires,
- It is this knowledge that it is essential to capture and document while having identified which type of customer-side profile they resonate with the most. It is conceivable that an Accounting Director and a Marketing Director are involved in the same investment decision making but do not share the same motivations. It is the perfect mastery of the subject in the eyes of different interlocutors that will enable the sales person to highlight the value that the change could bring collectively. In concrete terms, this means that lists of questions, messages and arguments must be created to support sales representatives and guide them in their exchanges with people with different profiles and objectives,
- The establishment of references, comparisons, case studies to demonstrate the reality of the offer and the benefits that others have derived from it,
- Outreach messages should be different according to the communication channels but remain personalised. An email, a LinkedIn message, a video, a phone call are not built in the same way. They must allow you to start a conversation in order to obtain something tangible (a meeting with one of the decision-makers for example) and immediate and not to try to sell something right away,
- The description of a sales cycle with its stages is essential. This is what allows us to better qualify the opportunities, to have a common language, to guide the sales representatives in the follow-up of their opportunities. They must change and adapt to changes in buying behaviour. This point is all the more important as systemic upheavals such as the one we are experiencing today have always been the cause of substantial changes in relations between buyers and sellers.
Things often seem clear. The real question to ask is how best to position one’s offer. There is only one answer: in the way that interests the customer.
Salesmetry has helped several companies to define the value proposition of their offer, their selling method and process in order to maximise the effectiveness of their sales approach and to give sales forces a more analytical view of their business.
This article can be found on LinkedIn.
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