Your Sales Process Starts Too Late

In today’s world of sales, by the time customers contact your reps, it’s a safe bet that it’s already too late for reps to have any influence over them or the outcome of the deal. Why? Customers have long since established their needs and their journey through the buying process is essentially complete.

The only certain thing reps have to look forward to at this point in the sale is getting hammered on price. In this customer-controlled, price-driven world of sales, reps are being relegated to a role of mere order fulfillment. As such, the only traditional sales “tactic” reps have left in their bag of tricks is discounting.

The culprit behind this shift in customer buying behavior: readily available information on supplier solutions from sources like the internet, consultants, peer organizations, and social media.Thanks to the  proliferation of information in recent years, customers no longer need to seek out supplier input as they have in the past. In fact, SEC research shows today’s customers have already determined their needs, picked a supplier, and settled on the price they want to pay before they even contact a supplier.

That being said, high performing reps continue to thrive despite this significant change in the sales environment. But how?  Our 2012 research found that the best reps are now getting in with customers ahead of the traditional sales funnel, shaping the nature of their demand by teaching with insight where customers learn.

Accordingly, it is now imperative that sales organizations begin supporting their reps at scale to shape customer demand should they want to ensure the success of their sales force in today’s marketplace. Microchip Technology, a U.S. based semi-conductor manufacturer, is one company that is taking the steps to do just this.

In an effort to better position its reps ahead of RFPs and to make certain they are in a position of influence with customers, Microchip includes a demand creation stage at the beginning of their sales process. Microchip’s “Stage Zero” sales process not only supports and encourages demand shaping activity at scale, but it also provides reps with a simplified framework for shaping customer demand.

As we found in our research this year, shaping customer demand is not easy and not all reps come equipped to execute the strategy on their own. More often than not, reps find the concept of shaping customer demand ahead of the sales funnel to be a challenging, ambiguous process that they are uncomfortable, if not incapable of, doing without guidance.

To make demand shaping a simple, tangible process for its reps, Microchip simplifies it into two steps within the first stage of the sales process entitled “Stage Zero”:

Research and Assess Prospect: Reps are to conduct due diligence on prospects to better understand potential areas of business concern or underperformance.
Create Curiosity/Opportunity Hypothesis: Reps form hypotheses on what prospects can be taught to gain their commercial interest.

These two straightforward steps enable any rep to collect the due diligence and develop the insight necessary to influence customer thinking in the formative stages of their learning process.

To make sure that reps are pursuing the right opportunities and to build manager tolerance to ambiguous, often prolonged rep demand shaping activity, Microchip also incorporates customer verifiers into each stage of “Stage Zero”. These verifiers not only prevent reps from wasting time on bad opportunities and getting ahead of customers in the sales process, but they also enable managers to track opportunity progress throughout the sales process, thereby enabling them to coach reps to shaping demand within specific opportunities.

SEC Members¸ to learn more about the mechanics of Microchips “Stage Zero” Sales Process and what customer verifiers they look for when shaping customer demand, make sure to check out the new best practice featured in this year’s study Getting in Early: Shaping Customer Demand Through Pre-Funnel Engagement.