5 Ways to Avoid a Price-Driven Sale

Customers are 57% through their buying process before they seek engagement with suppliers (see chart below). Think about that for a moment. Customers are doing a lot more buying before we have the opportunity to sell.

In fact, many members tell us that customers want to engage with us only when they’re ready to talk about one thing—price—with many more opportunities going out to bid. And a traditional, solutions-selling approach is leading us right into this procurement trap.

We’ve found that organizations face certain barriers when responding to this dynamic. In other words, there are landmines on the path out of RFP-land. These include:

Landmine #1:  Reps cannot (or will not) engage customers earlier in their buying process

Much of the guidance we give salespeople is geared toward indentifying customers/prospects after they have defined their needs, have budget allocated, and a clearly defined timeline to make a decision. Unfortunately, that’s guiding reps to opportunities at the tip of that blue arrow.

At the same time, customers are engaging in new forms of learning—accessing information online and within social networks. This offers a new opportunity to engage customers; however, many sales organizations fail to capitalize on it.

Leading companies are enabling their salespeople to engage customers much earlier in their buying process—even before the buying process begins—by developing insights to share as well as the channels through which to share this insight. The goal here isn’t necessarily selling—but rather networking and influencing.

Learn more on how the best companies engage customers earlier in the sales cycle.

Landmine #2: Reps are ill equipped to disrupt the customer’s internal decision making process—instead they’re too reactive or product-oriented, leading to cost-focused conversations

Existing sales collateral/presentations tend to focus on supplier information—confirming what the customer already knows about our products, services, and solutions. This hinders our ability to clearly differentiate ourselves from our competition, leading to the price-focused conversations we strive to avoid.

Leading companies are developing messages that focus on customer-focused insight that is purposefully designed to disrupt the customer’s status quo. They seek to enable their salespeople to, appropriately, demonstrate where the customer/prospect is doing things wrong, and where they can improve.

Learn more on how to develop a world-class commercial teaching message.

Landmine #3: Reps engage the wrong people at the account/opportunity, hurting conversion rates and account growth

Reps naturally seek to engage with senior decision makers—however, with the rise of the “consensus buy” (i.e., decision makers requiring broad support), reps need to engage lower level stakeholders to get a deal done.

Many reps struggle here to engage the right stakeholders to focus on and they end up wasting time with friendly contacts who actually don’t do anything to help.

Leading organizations focus their account planning methodology to enable their reps to identify “Mobilizers”—those stakeholders, regardless of level, who can rally the internal organization around our value proposition.

Read more about Mobilizers and download the Challenger Account Plan.

Landmine #4: Your sales organization isn’t set up to support meaningful execution of your sales strategy

Sales executives want an organization that is able to translate strategy into business results. However, sales strategy needs to evolve in light of changing customer buying behavior and many executives question whether their organization is prepared to adapt (Note—this is similar to the transition from product- to solutions-selling we saw 10–15 years ago).

Leading organizations seek to understand the changes and investments that need to be made to increase rep engagement and performance. The SEC is currently in the process of analyzing the key drivers of successful sales transformations, with results to be published in early 2013.

Read the early findings from the study here, Driving Effective Sales Transformations.

Landmine #5: Sales training is engineered to develop skills rather than change behavior

Many organizations test for skill acquisition after training; however, far fewer determine whether the reps change their behavior on the front-line and/or whether the training has impacted commercial outcomes.

Without ensuring behavior change happens, training impact is lost when reps go back out into the field.

Instead, leading sales organizations focus on ensuring skill adoption through structured manager-led coaching sessions as well as testing for long term behavior change through certification.

Learn more on how to get training to “stick” and help reps internalize new behaviors.