To deliver insight, you need to be trusted. The deepest insight will achieve nothing if customers don’t trust it or listen to it (only 29 per- cent of customers actually want to talk to a salesperson, according to HubSpot). Customer-centricity is at the very heart of being trusted, but insight-based selling often comes across as self-oriented. Insight on its own doesn’t build trust or influence customers toward a desired outcome. It makes you what we call a “Disruptive Outsider.”
INFLUENCE
Selling is very much about persua- sion and influencing the outcome of a decision, but influence is also not enough on its own to win deals against a skilled competitor. Influencing strategies are vulner- able to game-changing insights. It’s essential to influence decisions – for example, by understanding the power and alignment of decision makers and exploring their decision criteria in advance of a pitch. But, even if you know how to influence, you can still lose to a competitor who makes the customer think about their decision in an entirely new way. On its own, insight is not enough to guarantee success, and the same is true of influencing skills. Influencing activities can also
destroy trust. One of the other chal- lenges with influencing customers is that influencing is fundamentally supplier-centric. You’re trying to get the customer to do what you want them to do; and, if you don’t do that with subtlety, it can easily destroy trust.
Influencing skills – based on behavioral science and decision strategy – are extremely powerful in guiding customers toward the right decision. However, influence without trust is ineffective, and influ- ence without insight doesn’t create enough value to change the status quo and win deals. People who rely only on influence risk being seen as a “Pushy Salesperson.”
TRUST
Relationships and the ability to create trust are key to new business develop- ment and growing existing accounts. But here, too, the one-dimensional approach is not enough. Trust without insight doesn’t stimu- late demand. Trust is an enabler of growth, not a driver of it. Clients may turn to a trusted advisor when they themselves have identified a need; but, in order to stimulate demand, the salesperson needs to be proactive in bringing insight to the discussion. Trust is insufficient to influence out- comes. Just as trust on its own isn’t enough to stimulate demand, it’s also not enough to get a customer to act. The customer buying cycle is complex and iterative, so salespeo- ple need a range of influencing skills to encourage and guide customers around the cycle. Someone who relies only on trust to sell is what we at Imparta de- scribe as a “Friendly Helper.” They are vulnerable to more insightful or
influential competitors, and are not proactive enough to drive growth in the business. They’re also the most common type of salesperson in most companies.
THE 3D SALESPERSON Insight, influence, and trust are not (when taken individually) sufficient to win. The above diagram shows what happens when you have just one or two of those dimensions. Yet, taken together, they are the three dimen- sions that most accurately define what remarkable selling is all about. The 3D Salesperson is able to stim- ulate demand and unseat competitors through the agile use of insight. They are able to navigate the buying cycle and win deals through a range of influencing strategies and skills, and they maintain access to key stake- holders by building and maintaining trust throughout.
Richard Barkey is founder and CEO of Imparta, and President of Imparta, Inc.
SELLING POWER OCTOBER 2019 | 39 © 2019 SELLING POWER. CALL 1-800-752-7355 FOR REPRINT PERMISSION.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41
