1. The most popular sales

There are many different sales approaches, and we list the best sales models in this section. Most of the most popular ones are trademarked and were created by sales consultants and trainers who wanted to define their own signature approach. These selling models include

1. SPIN Selling,
2. The Challenger Sale,
3. SNAP Selling,
4. Conceptual Selling,
5. Consultative Selling, and many more

Unfortunately, this means many of the sales approach examples you’ve heard of are really products being sold to you. It doesn’t mean they aren’t useful; it just means you should be wary of trusting what you hear about any specific sales approach.

 

The most popular sales models are:

1. The Challenger Sale
2. Command of the Sale
3. Conceptual Selling
4. Consultative Selling
5. Customer-Centric
6. Selling Inbound
7. Selling MEDDIC
8. NEAT Selling
9. SNAP Selling
10. Solution Selling
11. SPIN Selling
12. Target Account Selling
13. The Sandler Selling

We’ll quickly summarize some of the most popular sales models and then walk you through how you should choose the right approach for your business.

 

1. THE CHALLENGER SALE

Sales professionals are generally categorized into five classes: Relationship builders, Hard workers, Lone wolves, and Reactive problem solvers.

It is claimed that challenger-type sellers are the most successful group, especially in the B2B enterprise market. This sales model is based on research from Gartner, which says that client behaviour has changed because of the amount of information they can access online. Prospects now spend far more time researching products and talking to peers, and are 57 per cent of the way through the buying journey by the time they contact a rep. “A challenger is really defined by the ability to do three things: teach, tailor, and take control.” The sales model focuses on the idea of the expert rep who pushes and challenges a customer. Rather than using relationship building techniques to get acceptance to the customer’s world view, it says, you should bring the customer into yours, by giving them information they did not know, and should know, about the world they operate in. Then tailor your communications to your prospect and take control of the discussion. The challenger sales model is effective in an environment where inexperienced customers are inundated with high quality information from the internet and want a rep to explain to them why they should buy.

 

2. COMMAND OF THE SALE

This selling approach was conceptualized and offered as a service by Force Management. The idea at the core of this methodology is that you should customize your company’s sales enablement tools and activities based on solutions that are already in place. This selling system says that success is down to perfect understanding of your own products, and of the customer’s business.

A rep should know:

• What the customer wants to achieve (their positive business outcomes)
• How the customer wants to create value for their business (their required capabilities) How the rep’s business will deliver that
• Why are they delivering it better than the competition

The rep should also know the metrics that a customer may use to measure success and all the evidence needed to demonstrate that their business is able to deliver better. Then they will be able to explain why their product should be bought at a premium. Force Management’s definition of Command of the Message is “being audible ready to define your solutions to customers’ problems in a way that differentiates you from your competitors and allows you to charge a premium for your products & services.”

 

3 Conceptual Selling

This method reframes sales as a process where a seller persuades a buyer to purchase a concept (their desired outcome), not a product. It focuses on listening to the client and understanding their underlying needs. The seller’s goal is to ask questions and actively listen to uncover the buyer’s ideal end-state. The seller can then tie their solution to that end goal.

 

It suggests asking five types of questions:

• Confirmation questions to make sure you understand existing information.
• New information questions to clarify the prospect’s concept of the product or service. Attitude questions seek to understand a prospect on a personal level
• Commitment questions inquire after a prospect’s investment in the project they’re working on.
• Basic issue questions to understand potential problems.

 

Conceptual selling focuses on the idea that a sale must be a win-win for both client and rep, and that businesses should walk away from sales which do not offer a high degree of satisfaction. Conceptual selling is likely to offer a more effective framework for businesses which rely heavily on reputation for customer satisfaction and expect to make many repeat sales in a relatively small, specialized market where referrals and word-of-mouth may be significant channels.

 

4 Consultative Selling

This method has its roots in solution selling, leveraging a veteran salesperson’s expertise, industry knowledge and reputation. Under this dynamic, customers make a purchase because they “trust” the seller and expect the purported benefits and results to be realized. Like conceptual selling, it focuses on asking questions to understand the customer and their needs.

 

It involves six stages:

• Prepare: Make sure you know everything you need to know about the client and their business, as well as your own products.
• Connect: Build a strong rapport with the client and make a strong opening. Understand: Get to know the client and their needs
• Recommend: Make a clear recommendation about what solution will be best Commit: Make a clear commitment about what you will do to the client
• Act: Follow up and make sure you meet your commitments

Like conceptual selling, this concept works best in industries where high levels of repeat business and word of mouth mean a requirement for client trust is at a premium.

 

5 Customer-Centric Selling

The name says it all: this method focuses on the challenges, goals, and convenience of the customer. The objective here is for you, the salesperson to become warm and trusted advisors to the client. Sales processes and activities are modified to suit the client’s schedule, objectives, and situation. Instead of making presentations, reps hold relevant conversations about how the solution can be modified to better match the client’s requirements. This sales model is like conceptual and consultative selling. It advocates a move away from the hard sell to one where the rep will walk away if the client’s needs are not met.

 

6 Inbound Selling

Inbound is based on the idea that it’s much easier to get customers to come to you, as opposed to traditional “outbound” techniques, such as cold calls and email outreach. In inbound selling, marketing techniques get tightly meshed with the processes and goals of sales. So instead of directly pushing sales-y scripts to their prospects, inbound sellers attract customers by setting up messaging opportunities where customers can actively or contextually engage the seller’s brand or product. Because buyers are now more empowered and informed when it comes to purchasing decisions, inbound sellers use data and analytics to hyper-personalize their messaging to pull customers towards the desired action. Inbound sales techniques focus on understanding the buyer’s journey to acquiring their product and suggest building the sales process based on that journey. The inbound sales approach prioritizes customers who are already choosing to be actively engaged by visiting the company’s website, asking for more information via a chatbot, or following the company on Twitter. Then reps will reach out to these individuals with personalized messages.

 

7 MEDDIC

MEDDIC methodology is characterized by a highly disciplined, tech-driven, and tightly controlled approach to the sales process. It emphasizes putting more effort into whether it’s worthwhile to get a buyer into your sales funnel by using comprehensive measurement techniques.

 

It stands for:

Metrics: Find out something quantifiable that the prospect wants to gain from your organization.

Economic Buyer: Identify who the decision maker is in the company you’re dealing with, which is often not the same as the first person the rep will meet.

Decision Criteria: Understand the factors that the prospect will use to decide, and how those criteria are weighted.

Decision Process: Understand how the decision will be made – who will do the deciding, what signoffs are required, and what timelines are involved.

Identify Pain: What problem is the customer facing that can be solved by your product? What will happen if they don’t buy a solution?

Champion: Find a champion – an individual at the company you’re targeting who wants you to succeed. The champion will likely be the person most affected by the company’s pain, and the one most likely to benefit from what you are offering.

MEDDIC is a sales method most useful for qualifying deals and identifying where reps should spend most of their time. Rather than focusing purely on how to make the sale, it focuses on where sales are most likely to take place, which makes it a particularly useful methodology with companies where there are multiple possible targets, and it is necessarily to target investment at the best prospects.

 

8 NEAT Selling

NEAT selling is as much a process for qualifying leads and working out where reps should focus their time as it is a methodology for making a sale.

 

NEAT stands for:  

Need: What is the core thing that the prospect needs. What is the thing that is causing them pain?

Economic Impact: What is the financial impact of the pain that is being caused to the prospect? How will they benefit if a solution is found?

Access to Authority: Who has the authority to decide, and how does the rep reach that person?

Timeline: What is the practical timeline to get the deal done. What date does the client need to go live with the product?

This methodology was designed to turn BANT (budget, access/authority, need, timing) on its head. The BANT structure is a tool that allows reps to work out what the customer’s position is, and therefore helps the rep understand what they need to do to close the deal, but it does not help understand what the customer themselves needs. Instead of qualifying customers based on the needs of the salesperson (qualifications for purchase), NEAT selling asks the salesperson to qualify how much they can help the prospect.

9 SNAP Selling

This method is based on the idea that customers have relatively little time to dedicate to deciding, and are often already overwhelmed with information when they reach the point of contact with a rep. So, the methodology is based on the idea that by keeping it simple and providing the most essential information, a rep can help the customer out. As its acronym implies, this method aims to quicken the sales process with the assumption that prospective buyers will generally be busy and distracted.

 

The four principles are:

Simple: When dealing with a busy person, complexities will fall flat, so offer only the most essential information

iNvaluable: Become a trusted expert for the buyer

Aligned: Make sure that you’re aligned with the customer and what it is that they need

Priority: Keep the most important decisions at the forefront of their mind.

The SNAP method is designed for a customer base which is frazzled, distracted, and needs something which can be explained simply and relied upon to work effectively.

 

10 Solution Selling

Solution selling eschews the product-centric approach and focuses instead on the benefits, impact, and relevance of a tailored solution. Solution-sellers dive deep into customers’ unique situations to identify their pain points and establish an agreed-upon set of criteria that characterize an acceptable resolution. Introduced in the late 1980s, solution selling evolved over the years to adapt its techniques to changes in buyer maturity and business environment.

Solution selling as a methodology preaches many of the same things as conceptual selling or consultative selling. It emphasizes understanding the customer’s pain points, asking questions to understand their underlying needs, having an excellent understanding of their business and needs, and offering not just a product but a solution to their problems. Solution selling has a particularly heavy emphasis on empathy, identification with the customer, and a focus on what the buyer needs. It’s likely to involve finding a highly customized, complex package which takes care of many of the customer’s core needs.

 

11 SPIN Selling

This method is based on the idea that customers buy products to solve problems, and the sales rep needs to diagnose what the problem is.

 

SPIN stands for four types of questions sellers should ask their prospects:

Situation: What is the situation for the prospect right now, as it pertains to your solution? Do you understand the buyer’s current process and resources?

Problem: More specifically, how does that situation cause a pain point? Where is the situation broken?

Implication: What are the results of that problem? If the situation doesn’t get resolved, what will happen for the prospect? What pain will they continue to suffer?

Need-Payoff: What happens when the problem is solved? What would that look like?

At this stage, the prospect should hopefully recognize for themselves the value that the product is creating. These questions help sellers assess their customers’ real situations, isolate the core problems that need to be solved, and lay out the consequences of not solving the problems.

 

12        Target Account Selling

Target account selling involves a focus on picking the right prospects to sell to in the first place, rather than how the deal is closed with those accounts once the rep makes contact. The process requires a lot more work to be put into researching the accounts that need to be targeted. Because the process is about identifying the right accounts, target account selling can often be largely automated, using a CRM to identify accounts which share traits and characteristics.

 

Once these common triggers are identified – the things which make people particularly likely to buy – then a structured, repeatable process can be applied to turn these prospects into sales.

 

13 The Sandler Selling System

This methodology reframes the role of sellers into trusted advisors who are as invested as customers in the success of a proposed or purchased solution – in common with many of the other methods above.

The Sandler Selling System emphasizes relationship building, lead qualification, and deal closing.

 

The Sandler System has a seven-step process:

• Bond and build rapport
• Establish roles and expectations
• Understand the prospect’s needs and pain points
• Understand if the prospect has the budget to fix their problem
• Find out the buyer’s decision-making process
• Propose your product as the solution
• Seal the deal