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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Keenan
Read between
May 11 - June 10, 2023
You aren’t losing sales because you can’t sell. You’re losing them because you don’t understand how to diagnose your customer problem(s) and how the problem(s) drive the sale.
Your product doesn’t drive the sale. The problem does, and if you can’t diagnose the problem, no sales skill or any other sales training is going to help you. When you reach out to get just “15 minutes” of your buyer’s time, it’s not going to happen if your buyer doesn’t have a problem you can solve.
That’s why you get no answer to 99% of your cold emails. They don’t highlight a problem tha...
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Being a great salesperson means being able to diagnose the customer’s problem and understanding the impact the problem is having on their business.
I didn’t go into sales because I love selling. I did it because I love helping people and solving problems. I love fixing shit. That’s what gap selling is all about. It’s not about pitching products and services; it’s about solving problems and making people’s lives easier.
No problem, no sale In every sale there’s a gap All sales are about change Customers don’t like change Sales are emotional Customers do like change when they feel it’s worth the cost Asking “Why?” gets customers to “Yes” Sales happen when the future state is a better state No one gives a shit about you
Every sale starts with a problem. If a problem doesn’t exist, there is no sale—period.
The worst thing in the world you can do at the beginning of a sale is to take your buyer’s word for granted or sell to a need.
Never sell to need. If you only solve the problem your buyer thinks they have instead of the one they really have, you haven’t helped them at all.
Gap selling is a process of tactfully challenging buyers’ assumptions, exposing (and sometimes confirming) the true size of their problem, then correctly assessing the impact it will have on their lives. The more impact, the larger the gap. And the larger the gap, the more valuable the solution, i.e., your product or service.
Whether they want something better or are getting away from something painful, customers buy because they’ve gotten uncomfortable and have identified something that will ease their discomfort. In other words, they feel a need to change.
phenomenon in which we ascribe more positive feelings toward things that have been around for a while than toward things that are new.
If you don’t know what will motivate your buyers to change, you’ll rarely get them to accept that the change you offer has enough value.
every time you talk about yourself, you risk triggering those change-resistant, emotionally fraught thoughts and feelings in your customers.
An edge over the competition
Increased profits
More rapid path to market
Millions of dollars in savings
Faster communications Happier, more engaged employees
Better customer retention Improved personal service More leads Increased response times Revenue
The majority of the information and elements you need to influence the sale come from understanding exactly where your buyer is today, what they are dealing with, how they’re operating, who’s involved, why it’s happening,
The current state is made up of five critical elements that help construct your understanding of your customers’ world in a way that will help you help them manage the change they are about to experience:
the literal and physical facts about your customer their problems the impact of those problems the root causes of the problems what effect those problems are having on your customers’ emotional state
Early in my career, I had a sales manager who told me there were two types of salespeople: the ones who were great at socializing and building relationships, and the ones who developed credibility. They were both great at their jobs, but the former would always have a smaller piece of the business than the latter. People want to go to hockey games with their friends; they want to buy from people who know their shit.
Challengers are defined as salespeople who are so knowledgeable about their customers’ industry and organization, and as a result are so well respected, they can pretty much speak their minds at any time, and even push their customers to consider ideas that may make them uncomfortable.
Buyers want to have a good experience with their sales reps, but ultimately, they’re looking for trustworthy advice and guidance.
Be an expert, not a friend.
The thing is, the gap is rarely clear to buyers initially. The win then becomes your ability to expose and shape the gap. Salespeople can manipulate the size of the gap by helping the buyer see things they didn’t see before. There is no way customers can understand the value of your life-saving pill if they don’t realize they are dying.
Unlike a traditional salesperson, you’re not going to accept their problems at face value and then offer a solution. Instead, you’re going to help your customers make sure they understand the full extent of their problems and let them figure out for themselves what will happen if they don’t do something about it.
Knowing you’re dealing with a small gap keeps you from wasting your time chasing after a sale that’s never going to happen (leaving you more time to concentrate on sales that will),
No matter what you’re selling, until you can get buyers to trust you enough to be vulnerable, open up, share information, offer you insight into their current state, and expressly ask you for your help, you will not make progress. Customers have to be ready to initiate and embrace this sales journey, or ain’t nothing gonna happen.
If you can’t get buyers to let you help them, the sale is dead.
You have to convince your customers that you understand their world and their pain.
Tell me this, Salesperson: Why should anyone have to spend one single minute convincing you that they are worthy of your time? That they are qualified to buy from you? What a joke! It’s completely backward.
Demand creation is what happens when you call a ticketing company to ask if they’ve ever considered consolidating their ticketing and CRM systems into one.
“What if I told you I could create a system that automatically registered your customers into your CRM every time they bought a ticket, automatically noted that they were first-time buyers, and automatically sent those first-time buyers a thank-you email that offered them a discount on future events to encourage them to come back? Would that change your business at all?”
Gap sellers never take their prospects’ word for granted when it comes to their needs.
Your product or service doesn’t matter right now. For real. Everything you do or say at this stage of the game should be entirely focused on your customers, understanding their current state, and getting to the bottom of what ails them.
The sale is won or lost during the discovery.
“The reason my product or service exists is to ________.”
1. Discover the Facts
Beyond probing questions, you want to ask process questions which try to get information on how your customers do what they do.
“Can you tell me about your ticket-selling process? Can you share your process for marketing to current patrons? Can you explain your process to identify your biggest donors and your smallest donors? Could you help me understand your reporting process?”
2. Discover the Problems
Train yourself so that every time you hear a lazy, vague, open-ended answer like, “We need to hire more people,” or “I want to increase revenue,” you stop the conversation and ask the prospect to articulate exactly what they mean.
What happens when you…? Has there ever been a time when…? If you did X, what do you think would happen?
you have to reveal the damage the problems are causing them today, and the grave consequences that will follow if they aren’t excised soon.
you’re going to let them figure out the damage for themselves.
“Tell me how this issue is affecting you.” “Can you describe the impact it’s having on your department?” “What are the consequences every time this problem occurs?”
The thing is, most salespeople focus on solving the technical problems when it’s the business problems that create a customer’s unique buying motivations and lead to the biggest gaps.
