MAIN INSIGHT 55
Duncan Adamson
SALES DIRECTOR EMEA
How important is ‘knowing your customer’ to sales and marketing teams?
They say businesses should strive to become customer-centric and really understand who their customers are. But in reality, not many businesses are very good at doing this. I’ve seen companies recently where the sales team have created their own buyer personas that they think they should be selling to, whilst at the same time the marketing team are promoting their services to a completely different set of personas. This, unsurprisingly, creates a disconnected journey for their buyers and as a result, makes it harder for a buyer to purchase from them. Where this particular company has fallen down, and this is true of many businesses, is that they haven’t applied or reviewed any data associated with their personas. The personas are created based on who they think their ideal customer is, when really personas should be created by looking at existing customers and profiling against them. By undertaking this process collaboratively, sales and marketing teams can identify which personas are best served by their different offers and then market / sell to them accordingly. The very best sales and marketing teams then turn this process into a continuous feedback loop, with the sales team regularly providing the marketing team with field-based feedback on what is helping to win customers and what might be holding them back.
What skills does a successful enterprise salesperson need to have?
The key to finding success as an enterprise level salesperson is knowing how to challenge a customer’s world without them feeling patronised or disagreed with. This is why coaching on frameworks and how to use open questions in a sales process is relied on time and time again - open questions allow buyers to reach their own conclusions. The right conversation frameworks bring an element of sophistication to the sales process that subtly uncovers what matters most to the buyer and at the same time can introduce new concepts that they might not have considered yet. When introducing a new concept to a prospect, the best enterprise salespeople will also provide relevant case studies that demonstrate how other companies have benefited from the same concept. This helps to build trust between the salesperson and the buyer, giving the buyer confidence that the solution being discussed is proven and they now know what the tangible benefits for their business could be.
The right conversation frameworks bring an element of sophistication to the sales process that subtly uncovers what matters most to the buyer and at the same time can introduce new concepts that they might not have considered yet.
It’s a little bit like a golf coach taking on a new client with a bad swing - you have to unpick what they’ve learned previously and take the time to steer them down the right path instead.
How have buying habits changed in recent years and what can businesses do to adapt?
Buyers are becoming increasingly sophisticated and independent in the early stages of their purchasing journey. They are prepared to invest their time researching and reviewing products and services before choosing which vendors to contact. As a result, buyers are far more knowledgeable in the early stages of relationships with potential vendors. For selling businesses, this brings both positive and negative impacts on their relationships with prospective customers. Knowledgeable buyers are often further along their own buying journey, which can reduce the qualifying time required and convert a prospect into a customer much quicker than before.
But on the other hand, it can also mean that prospects have more preconceptions than they may have done previously. It’s a little bit like a golf coach taking on a new client with a bad swing - you have to unpick what they’ve learned previously and take the time to steer them down the right path instead. If buyers are frequently contacting you with incorrect preconceptions about your offering, then it is important to let your marketing team know. This way they can edit existing content or even create new content online that removes any ambiguity or misunderstanding of your offering. Nobody likes being told that they are wrong, so sales teams must be adaptable when facing buyers with misconceptions - otherwise they risk coming across as patronising! It’s no easy task, but if you can successfully unpick a buyer’s misconceptions and uncover what their true needs are, you will be in a powerful position to guide them down the conversion path.
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