The Value Selling Framework methodology focuses on lead qualification and lead value assessment, enabling sellers to close deals faster and engage only the leads which are likely to have a significant impact on their portfolio.
Sales professionals are encouraged to ask the right questions, articulate the value of a product to the customer’s business, and demonstrate flexibility in formulating a mutually beneficial solution. It’s all about making sure that you’re adding value to the customer, at every stage of the process.
How to Choose the Right Sales Methodology
Your sales methodology should match your product, customer, and market. Any mismatch will feel unnatural to both the sales rep and the customer. For example: if you sell a product that costs R100,000 per year, it might make sense to apply 6 months of consultative sales effort to get the sale. You wouldn’t want to do the same if your product costs R10/month. On the other hand, you also can’t expect to win a R1M deal spending only R5 to support the sales effort!
This indicates there are different B2B sales methods. Despite all the fancy names of sales methodologies listed above, B2B sales is only governed by five approaches:
- DIY Self Service: A complete end-to-end web experience where clients educate themselves and complete the purchase online. For example, Atlassian made waves by growing to a huge size using a very low-touch sales model.
- Transactional selling: Helping customers buy the solution they picked themselves, often through online research. These customers often are in a hurry and ready to buy. 3. Solution selling: Customers already understand their problem and want sales to address specific issues with products and services. Customers buy in days to weeks.
- Consultative selling: The customer does not fully understand the problem. Sales has to diagnose the customer’s situation to determine the right solution. Sales can take 6-18 months.
- Provocative selling: Sales experts can identify clients who will face a problem before the client himself knows. They provoke an executive client into action. Often applied to innovative solutions, this B2B sales methodology takes anywhere between 3 to 9 months.
Different selling processes that govern B2B sales just describes how sellers sell, and how buyers buy. That’s what makes this framework so useful! It cuts out all the sensational nonsense and focuses on the core of the issue: what is the best way to sell? In this blueprint, we will focus on Transactional, Solution, Consultative and Provocative selling.
Transactional Selling: The transactional sales methodology is reactionary. Customers know what they want, and they are price shopping for lead times. They may be willing to forfeit a specific feature if it can save them a lot of money. In transaction selling, clients don’t value the role salespeople perform, and usually prefer that salespeople are excluded from the process altogether. Sometimes, buyers like to see sellers replaced by web-based conversations and text/chat, through which they get direct and short answers. Transactional Selling in which clients do most of the education on their own When should you use transactional selling? It’s best used in high volume, high velocity, inbound, low-cost sales.
Solution Selling: The solution sales process is a reactionary process. A customer understands the problem and has a pretty good idea of what solution they are looking for. They are not quite price shopping (which would make it transactional), but they are looking for specific features that they are willing to pay more for. They may have narrowed it down to 2 or 3 providers by the time they reach out to you. Solution Selling often follows an Inbound Lead.
Consultative Selling: In consultative selling, you invest in educating the client on what is important based on what you have seen in the market. You help them understand the real problem and teach them how to look for the right solution. Your experience guides the client to be specific about requirements for features and functionality. You may help them write the RFP/RFQ. This kind of deal is often earmarked with a Proof of Concept, making the consultative sale significantly longer. During the consultative sales process, we gradually ramp up the quality of resources used as we navigate through the client’s organization. Consultative Selling often follows Outbound Lead Generation/Development.
Provocative Selling: When you are representing an innovative solution that challenges the status quo, you cannot rely on the consultative process because most clients do not realize there is a problem lurking. You cannot trust an RFP/RFQ which is designed to flush out lowest price/minimal spec. Thus, you must rely on Provocative Selling, which has gained popularity through a methodology called the Challenger sale. Provocative Selling Only recommended to deploy on specific accounts
Final Tips for Choosing a Sales Methodology Too many people choose a sales methodology based on what sounds new, convincing, or flashy. That’s the wrong way to go about it. Choose a sales methodology that is too simple for your solution, and you lose deals when your customer expects a little more help through their shopping process. Choose a methodology that’s too complex, and you increase the cost of acquisition, spending too much on lower-value customers. Say goodbye to profits! It can be tricky to strike the balance between spending enough time and too much, but you can start by taking note of your average deal size, sales cycle, and number of deals per rep each month. Given those pieces of information, you can calculate your average cost of acquiring a customer and choose a methodology that protects your margins while maintaining healthy close rates.
– Happy Selling! –