The ABC's of Selling - N (Needs)

N - Needs

Selling didn't change much from the industrial revolution to the 1970's. Then consultative, or need-based selling was introduced by Neil Rackham who conducted the first scientific research on sales effectiveness funded by Xerox and IBM.

They found out that the best salespeople listen first and actually hold back the product or solution until they have thoroughly heard the buyer's needs. It doesn't matter that you call on this industry every day and know most of their issues; they have to confess, and thereby start building a relationship. These findings changed the listen-to-talk ratio for good salespeople.

Out of that finding many sales training companies began selling "discover-link-present" training for building personl preference with a single buyer. This should be a foundational skill set and habit with any salesperson today. The dash-to-the-demo approach is a common fault we still see in many salesforces even though this type of training has been around for over 30 years.

We need to talk about their stuff more and our stuff less. When selling to executives focus on outcomes and results of your solution, not how it works. The technical buyers will want to know that.

A few gaps have emerged in this type of sellin. First of all, it works best in demand reaction selling where the buyer has asked you in. If you are prospecting and doing demand creation selling, you don't have an hour to play twenty questions, you have about two minutes to show value and provoke interest in order to get another five in order to get 20 more or a demo later.

Also in a complex sale, where committees buy, the client team doesn't always agree with each other on priority of needs. So when they can't get them all from one vendor, a political power struggle often breaks out. Issues change priority as you go through the sales cycle. Once you have been selected it happens again in the approval process with all new stakeholders each with different new needs.

Discover-link-present is a foundational skill set, but it is not enough in a committee buy or complex sale. You also need a political strategy to sell to the right people and a competitive strategy to defeat the competition.