3 critical insights you need to survive in the era of Sales 3.0
I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading (as Verne Harnish says: we all need to out read the competition) and the first book I wanted to review was “Mastering the complex sale” by Jeff Thull.
Jeff explains that the sales process has evolved from selling your product (era 1.0), to responding to your prospect’s problem and solving it with them (era 2.0), to what is now the sales era 3.0.
Sales era 3.0 recognises that most of your prospects can’t even define their problem or may not even know they have one! Because of this, it is very difficult for them to understand where your solution delivers value. Also, as the solutions become more complex, prospects don’t have the expertise, the experience and the criteria to evaluate the relevance and usefulness of your solution to their business. And that’s when you end up in a price war for the part that they do understand!
Check out this video for a 3 min explanation from Jeff Thull himself (interview courtesy of Verne Harnish):
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These are some pretty daunting starting assumptions when it comes to selling your product… So Jeff offers a few really critical insights in his book:
- You MUST have a “value hypothesis”
You need to be able to analyse your prospect’s business and, based on your experience and industry knowledge, realistically assess the value for a prospect. He really stresses the point that if the value isn’t there then you’re wasting the prospect’s time and importantly, your own. - Single decision makers are obsolete.
Decisions on complex solutions require buy-in from all of the impacted business functions. Each of these people needs to understand the value for their part of the business as well as the overall value to the company. There may be one person signing the cheque, but they’ll need all of those others to be driving the change and the implementation. - Value does not end at the implementation!
True masters of the complex sale, are absolutely committed to ongoing “value extraction” for their customers. How many times have you heard about the dream solution being sold, then the implementation simply not measuring up and everyone feeling let down by the experience? Businesses have an ongoing commitment to help their customers extract all the value they possibly can, in a true win/win situation.
In terms of your web strategy, you need to consider:
- How can I assist my prospects and customers in calculating the value of my offer on line?
- How can I ensure that there is useful and relevant information for all of the impacted business functions?
- How can I continue to serve my existing customers in such a way that they are able to continue to extract value from my solution?
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