How to perfect the art of insight selling for your business.
Customers don’t want to be coerced into making a purchase – and you’d be surprised how often some companies need to be reminded of this. Where you could once get away with more aggressive, door salesman-style selling tactics, today’s customers want to feel that you know your product inside out and understand their needs. This knowledge-led approach to sales is a far more rewarding and lucrative experience.
This is what is known as insight selling. In the context of sales, an insight is a piece of relevant and compelling market research, trends analysis, data, expertise or experience that when shared, helps a prospective customer to overcome a problem.
If a salesperson is using insight selling correctly, they can analyze a customer’s current situation, determine whether it’s a problem, risk or opportunity, and then tailor their sales pitch appropriately. This makes the salesperson more of a consultant, which is a whole new level of responsibility.
With these new powers come new recipes for success. Here are a few tips to get your teams up to speed with insight selling.
Become an expert advisor
Today’s consumers have the Internet at their fingertips, but that doesn’t mean that they want to make their decisions alone. Information does not necessarily translate into confidence, and consumers often want to think through their decisions aloud.
With that in mind, salespeople need to have expert knowledge on the issues and challenges that their customers face. Instead of listing all your product specs, you need to offer real evidence for how your products can help resolve a problem. Acting as a trustworthy and empathetic advisor or consultant, rather than a salesperson, helps build important customer trust and loyalty.
Use real-life case studies and tailored scenarios to bring your offer to life, attend conferences and events that are relevant to your customers and learn about what your competitors are doing to give you an edge. Soon, you’ll find you’re having better conversations.
Use data
Just as your client will need to demonstrate a good return on investment to their superiors and colleagues, you need good statistics to demonstrate how your product or service is one step ahead of the competition.
Data analytics tools can help you do this. These tools will identify current buying trends in the market from a glut of historic customer data, so that you don’t have to do it manually. This data will help you make insightful predictions about future consumer behavior and spot any lucrative upselling or cross-selling opportunities. You’ll also be alerted to any changes in current customer buying patterns.
As soon as something shifts, you’ll know – meaning you can do something about it quicker, too.
Create ‘lightbulb’ moments
When it comes to sales, a ‘lightbulb’ moment is when you capture your prospects’ attention with a solution they haven’t thought of, leading you to get your foot in the door. Creating lightbulb moments normally involves answering the following question: does your target buyer have the problems, risks and opportunities that your offer addresses?
If yes, great. You can now use the insights to interact with your prospect, helping them shape ideas and solutions for their business. And you’ll get bonus points, too – by paying attention to your customers’ needs and looking out for them at all times, you build customer loyalty and earn repeat business.
Rather than telling customers what to do or buy, listen to them. Salespeople who understand this know that their role is not to give answers, but to help their customers find them. So, encourage your sales teams to help customers see what is possible. That is the key to insight selling.
