Executing the Shift to Insight Selling

Recently, we gathered a group of sales enablement members to talk about executing the shift to Insight Selling, and how organizations can best enable their sales teams to sell differently in order to succeed in the new era of sales (read more about The End of Solution Sales).

Our discussion centered on what progressive companies are doing to cope with the changing realities of sales. In particular, sales enablement leaders shared what their organizations are doing in response to:

Changing customer preferences: Most customer organizations are in a constant state of change. Today’s organizations are more agile, and as a result, customers’ needs and demands are constantly changing, making it hard to serve targeted companies.
Moving the conversation beyond price: Most sellers are under constant price pressure—customers are engaging suppliers later in the sales process than ever before, and the requirements for reaching consensus on a purchase decision are expanding.
Engaging customers in the sale: Reps used to engage customers by simply asking them “what keeps them up at night,” but today reps need to offer more than good questions in order to engage customers. They need to offer disruptive insights about what the customer fails to recognize and what they should do about it. 

Here are a few ideas members shared on initiatives they are implementing inside their organizations to enable sellers to cope with these changes in the sales environment:

Rep-created contract: A member in the insurance industry shared how to drive adoption of new behaviors—the company created contracts that reps write at the completion of their sales academy training specifying the activities and behaviors that they will adopt going forward. Managers receive copies of the contract and provide on-going coaching to support reps in meeting their contract objectives.
Challenger-based activity metrics: In the tech sector a member explained how their company revised compensation plans to incentivize reps on activity metrics that are tied to specific Challenger competencies.
Leaders walk the talk with prospects: A member from a diversified industrial company shared how their CEO talks to potential clients about becoming a Challenger organization, and uses their story as a marketing tool to explain to clients how they can help them understand their business better.
CRM-integration and simplification: A member in the energy sector explained how at their company high-performing challenger reps had the worst compliance with their CRM system requirements. To drive usage of the CRM system, the company evaluated the reporting requirements and aligned them with the Challenger selling approach.

SEC members learn more about SEC’s exciting new research topic for 2013, Driving Effective Sales Transformation, and read about our newest diagnostic offering, the Sales Transformation Survey.

Share with us what your organization is doing to enable insight selling.