Here is a clever video our crack team created that explains a good way to make thought leadership selling simpler.
While the video oversimplifies many of the challenges of good solution selling or needs based selling – it zero’s in on the big sales support gaps we see at most organizations. In particular:
- Marketing does not support selling activities very well with good reasons to call or ideas that open doors and create repeat calls.
- The sales processes most organizations use are good – but they take alot of time for sales people to execute – writing up reports and recommendations, and inputting data into the system. They ignore the fact that sales and training time are incredibly scarce and expensive resources. To generate real sales efficiency and the biggest bang for the buck, sales support investments need to focus on shrinking training and homework time.
- Marketing automation and database analytics can only point the way to “probable opportunities” – no matter how much money you spend on analysis and lists, and how much data you mine – ultimately it takes a human picking up the phone to qualify and develop opportunities. And they receive very little support in that activity.
The video talks about our collaborative selling tool – called a Relationship Selling System - in very practical terms. It addressed the very real issues facing human salespeople and relationship managers as they try to engage, qualify, nurture and develop leads and opportunities. This tool fills the gap between analytics (that point salespeople in the right direction) and opportunity management systems (which keep score once they have done the hard work of calling and creating opportunities). The tool is unique because it addresses the real issues facing sales support organizations who are under pressure to improve sales performance and drive measurable growth on limited budgets:
- It helps salespeople perform better without alot of training time – which is very scarce.
- It helps salespeople qualify and collect better profile data about customers
- It helps salespeople deliver good ideas, sound advice and relevant solutions to customer problems – without “product pushing”
I have been responsible for sales at a major services company for years…this captures it perfectly and is focused on the hardest part of successful selling. We have been sent across the country and spent days learning about blue sheets and economic buyers. We’ve analyzed the process to the point that I’m dizzy…in the end the message boils down to what is describe above. Systems that recognize time constraints of both ours and our customers are going to be the most successful.