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According to research by Gartner, customers are more than halfway (57%), through the purchase process before they have the first meaningful contact with a seller. Other research suggests that 53% of customer loyalty is driven by the sales experience, NOT brand, price, service, or product. This means that customers already have a preconceived notion about your product/service and it has increasingly become more important to focus on their buying experience rather than bragging about just the product and pricing.
There are 5 seller profiles:
· Hard Worker who is self-motivated and doesn’t give up easily.
· Lone Wolf who is self-assured and delivers results mostly but is hard to manage
· Relationship Builder who is a consultative salesperson and is great at creating relationships.
· Problem Solver who responds to stakeholders well and loves to solve problems.
· The Challenger who tries to understand the customer’s business and challenges them. Has a different view of the world.
Almost 40% of star performers were challenger salespeople and the number goes up to 54% in the case of more complex sales.
Here are the six core traits of a challenger salesperson –
• Offers a unique perspective to the customer.
• Has strong 2-way communication skills.
• Knows the individual customer’s value drivers.
• Can identify economic drivers of customer’s business.
• Is comfortable discussing money.
• Can pressure the customer.
As a challenger salesperson, you are defined by the ability to do three things well:
TEACH for differentiation – By 2 –way dialogue during the sales interaction, it is important to show them something new and valuable. Commercial teaching techniques can be a good approach at this stage. This will help challenge the status quo of your prospects - a big hurdle when selling.
• Why should people buy from you over anyone else?
• How can you reframe the problem for customers?
• Your prospects need to understand why they should take an action, and the urgency to do it now
TAILOR the solution to resonate with the decision maker’s most pressing issues. Challenger salespeople are not only good at doing their homework about the customer but are also good at questioning. Tip: Get the prospect to outline their top 3 challenges and create your solution based on how you will help them overcome those specific challenges.
TAKE CONTROL of the discussions around commercials and challenge customer thinking. Challengers are not scared to push the customer to close and discuss pricing. Once you have successfully created the value, be more demanding of your time and effort. Avoid giving early discounts and avoid leaving commercial discussions very late. When you give the cost, remember that the first one who speaks loses.
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To know more contact us on hello@thegrowthsquad.co.uk