Insight and Value-Based Selling – “Catch Me If You Can”
“Oh no! We lost the account after chasing them for so long!” We couldn’t close the deal again! “Our Sales keeps dipping! And the huge footfalls in our stores don’t reflect in the figures at the end of the month”. All these and more sulking comments you hear from salespeople. Today’s customers have become very slippery. The business and service landscape has dramatically changed.
The art of serving today’s sophisticated customers creates a dizzying effect on many businesses due to the presence of the many dimensions and complexities driven by emerging technology, constant innovation, and abundant competitor offerings.
Today, businesses and customers alike, live in a new maze characterized by high customer volatility, an increased presence of knock-offs, spoilt for choice attitudes all yoked together in the cocoon of a buyers’ market. How do businesses of the present and the future deal with all these prevailing challenges at the same time in pursuing their sales?
Fundamentally, Sales is the lifeline to every business everywhere on the planet. Without consistent performance and measurable results, the whole system will surely crumble and grind to a halt. Budget cuts, job losses, depreciated assets, shrinking profits, and ultimately bankruptcy. Trifling with the art of selling without adequate training and consistent coaching will not be a wise path to chart. The wind of change and evolution with the persona of today’s customers’ has warranted a swift response and shift at approaching the Sales & Marketing matrix in serving today’s customers.
The days of “walk in the park sales” through the selling of the traditional F.A.B (features, benefits, and advantages) is insufficient for today’s Sales matrix. More so, bullying today’s customers with a seller’s apathy of “buy or leave!”, “This is what is available!” coupled with service apathy, weak frontlines, a disinterested and dispassionate sales force will only deepen the holes in your revenue vault, causing your revenue streams to stagnate irrespective of the wits of your board members or the size of your operating capital.
Persistence in the past stereotypical approach of selling will only result in businesses finding themselves in the land of revenue nightmares, wasted efforts, and an eventual collapse. Businesses and brands of the future irrespective of their size and industry are now faced with the challenge and opportunity of addressing the versatile, diverse, and dynamic needs of today’s customers in their bid to stay competitive, generate consistent revenue, and survive into the foreseeable future.
More critically the business of Sales as usual through the trumpeting of product or service features coupled with some benefits and advantages plus baiting discount offerings have all been dethroned. This is because it is inorganic and unsustainable. Spending huge budgets on media buying without a congruent alignment and a thorough coherent Sales strategy driven by a high-performance Salesforce will only point one in the direction of wasted efforts and investments.
What will be the essence of creating awareness and interest when you don’t have the matrix to ensure conversion? Harnessing and leveraging our consulting experience over the years, we gleaned these valuable insights about Sales at serving customers. These insights generated over time revealed the following glaring realities:
- Spending huge marketing budgets with no direct impact and correlation on sales
- Untrained staff with high Sales target to achieve
- High workforce turnover due to non-performance
- Collapsing businesses due to the copy-cat approach at Sales & Marketing
- Brand visibility and awareness that does not translate into product off-take or repeated service engagements.
The conventional approach of Sales & Marketing in dealing with modern and sophisticated consumers and customers will not be a decision of value and will warrant critical interrogation for companies that want to offer value to their target market. Acker’s (1991) definition and framework of brand equity as “A set of assets or liabilities in the form of brand visibility, brand associations, and customer loyalty that add or subtract from the value of a current or potential product or service driven by the brand” sets the tone for a drastic change in approach and attitude towards the way we serve today’s customers. Without an in-depth understanding of today’s customers, Sales & Marketing will face a herculean task at conversion and ultimately winning the account.
The new wave of addressing all the above challenges as adopted by most value-driven businesses across the globe is through the framework of Insight and Value-based Selling. This is one of the new approaches adopted and being used to effectively and smartly serve today’s customers at Sales. This Strategic technique incorporates the careful and painstaking understanding of the psyche of today’s customers, the customers’ pain, the creation and customization of fit-for-purpose solutions, and the value that will accrue out of pursuing the relationship with the customer if one is to win them. Today’s customers may be slippery, sophisticated, but they can still be caught using the right tools, techniques, and approaches. Let’s get talking to discover how to win more customers and keep them. (Previously published in Business 24).
Contributors
Rev. John Thompson has spent his career over the years building high-performance culture in organizations he has consulted for. He has worked in Branding, Sales, Marketing, Strategy, Business Planning and strategic execution capacities at ‘Exposure’. As a certified Train the Trainer and Sales performance coach, he has added value to many teams and corporate professionals. His consulting clients include Local and Multinational companies in FMCG, Retail, Renewal energy, Pharmaceutical, Insurance, Real estate & Construction, consumer products, financial services, and Hospitality industries, amongst others.
Lauretta Thompson (Mrs.) She is an associate consultant and in charge of Sales and Administration at ‘Exposure’. With a versatile skill-set, well vexed in customer service and service quality; she has worked her career building valuable business relationships, perfecting the art of cold calling, closing deals, and ensuring that clients’ expectations are met through service quality and professionalism. She has effectively managed different teams to pitch and win accounts of both local and multinational corporations.