How to Break Free from the Seller’s Apathy Loop
In a recent buyer’s preferences study by CSO Insights, researchers highlight how buyers perceive salespeople and what they wish they would do differently and more consistently. What they found is that buyers want salespeople to understand their business before the engagement, to be be excellent communicators, to focus on post sale and to receive insights and perspective.
A major issue they found for salespeople is that the buyers have them in an apathy loop that is hard to break out of. According to the study, this apathy loop comes in five parts:
1. Sellers are viewed as “meeting” but not exceeding expectations.
2. As such, buyers see sellers as representatives of products, not solvers of business problems.
3. Correspondingly, buyers wait until they want to learn about a specific solution before engaging a seller.
4. Sellers often feel constrained in their opportunities to sell and demonstrate value. Most buyers say when they engage multiple vendors, one is usually a “little” better than the others.
5. And with that, sellers meet a buyer’s expectations. From a buyer’s point of view, “I was ready to purchase a specific solution and the seller assisted with that.” And the cycle continues…
This apathy loop creates a gap between buyers and sellers that makes it hard to acquire, grow and retain customer relationships. Some larger organizations like Amazon don’t see this as a problem, but as a seller, you don’t want your buyers to move to self-service mode and exclude you from the buying process entirely.
So how do you break out of this loop? Here are three suggestions:
1. Find opportunities for early engagement
Surprisingly, 90% of the buyers surveyed said they would be open to engaging with a salesperson earlier on in the buying process. Early engagement offers sellers more time to create a relationship and differentiate themselves from other sellers.
To find these opportunities, you must be able to target the decision makers and get their attention by communicating your unique value. One way we do this is by using LinkedIn Sales Navigator. You can target your ideal buyers, understand what they value, and engage them in a personal way. It’s important to make sure your profile reflects how your prospect’s challenges can be solved by using your solution.
It’s imperative that a seller understands the buyer’s business and challenges before they engage. A great opportunity for sellers to learn more about their buyer’s world is to do an internet search of job postings in a similar industry and similar title of your ideal client profile. Job postings are treasure troves of valuable information where you can learn what the primary objectives and priorities are of your prospect. You can also learn the key performance indicators of how they are typically being measured in their job performance.
Knowing this enables the seller to engage their prospective buyer with valuable information that will help your prospect overcome their challenges and achieve their goals. In this way, the seller becomes a valuable resource in the minds of their prospect.
2. Communicate unique value
Value is perceived in a contrasting worldview. It’s in the distance between what your prospect’s world looks like today (WITHOUT your product/service) and what their world could look like tomorrow (WITH your product/service) that your prospect perceives value.
It’s important to identify specific value positions that make you stand out among others in your marketplace. A value position has 3 important characteristics:
- Important to PROSPECT.
- Unique to YOU.
- You can DEFEND it.
If you solve a problem that your prospect isn’t experiencing, there’s no value to them and they won’t engage you. If it’s not really unique to you, then why should they use you? Finally, if you can’t prove it, where’s the credibility? How can you make statements that are indefensible?
Value Position Statements are the single most important part of your selling conversation. These succinct “Imagine if” or “What if” statements are what your PROSPECT can do differently, NOT telling them the capabilities of your gizmo or software. This is what will help boost your perceived value and make you stand out among your competitors.
3. Prioritize post-sale follow through
Once you’ve made the sale, it’s extremely important to have a process in place that ensures a smooth follow-through. According to the study, sellers are perceived as not focusing enough on, or demonstrating enough commitment to, what happens after the sale.
The buyer cares the most about what happens after the sale, when the solution is implemented and you have created value for them. This means that this should be a top priority for salespeople too. Make sure your account management methodology and customer success process is providing the execution that exceeds your buyer’s expectations. Never stop striving to improve your post-sale follow-through processes.
If you consistently look for early engagement opportunities, communicate value, and prioritize post-sale follow through, you will not only stand out in the marketplace, but you’ll be able to build strong, long-lasting relationships with your clients.
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We understand it can be hard to know where to start when you want to stand out in the marketplace and communicate value clearly and consistently. That’s why we’ve created an E-book on Communicating Value that you can download HERE.
Please leave your feedback in the comments section.
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