“Selling with insight” is all the rage in our profession, and for good reason. “Challenging” customers and prospects with insights about how they might solve important problems, realize elusive opportunities or create a competitive advantage can be an effective way to engage at high levels. As long as these insights are truly unique and valuable we can sometimes get the attention of senior decision makers, compel them to move from the status quo and set ourselves apart from our competitors. Sometimes we can make the customer aware of risks or opportunities they haven’t thought of; or get them to think about things in a different way. Of course our products and services must be able to deliver a viable solution to effectively address these issues.
But it seems that too many sales teams view insight selling as a one-way street. For them it’s all about delivering insights. Whether these “insights” come from their personal experience or their marketing department (perhaps based on a combination of research and other customers’ experiences) they come to the table armed with telling the customer about them. A lot has been written about some of the pitfalls that can (and have) come along with this approach. For one, unless the salesperson has true first hand knowledge and experience they often stumble when the customer challenges the insight or asks questions that require such knowledge. For more on this point read this excellent article by David Brock. And what if the customer is already keenly aware of (maybe experiencing) the issue our insight addresses? After all, senior executives are usually well-versed in their industry and may well know more about the issue than the sales rep. And they certainly know more about their own business than the seller.
The outcome in these situations is seldom good. The insight pitch falls flat and the seller is viewed as shallow, not creating value and wasting the customer’s time. Credibility goes down the drain or, perhaps worse, the rep comes off as arrogant and insulting to the prospective buyer. So much for establishing a relationship of trust and value which, despite some nouveau advice to the contrary, is still more than a little bit important. And we must take care to be confident our “insights” aren’t “old news”; commonly know factoids or the mindless regurgitation of statistics. As an aside, I sometimes wonder what happens when we run out of insights (in a defined business cycle or period)? How many truly provocative insights can we come up with? They don’t come along every day or they wouldn’t be provocative, they’d be old hat. It seems to me that truly compelling insights are pretty rare. Maybe you’ve experienced otherwise.
In any event, what these “insight delivery types” seem to so often miss is that, in a sales situation, insights are a two-way street. The need to gain insights from the customer is as important, arguably more important, than delivering insights. Sure, we do pre-call research, but there is always much more to learn during the initial sales interactions. And that suggests good old-fashioned (dare I say it?) “solution selling” fundamentals: asking effective questions to gain insights into the customer’s unique situation and challenges, urgency to act, decision stakeholders and process, true needs (vs. demands), competing alternatives, etc., etc. What’s needed is a dialog, not a diatribe! It requires collaboration on creating something that solves the issues for this customer. Certainly, the best sellers can challenge and sometimes change the buyer’s thinking on these things. And they may be able to influence the buying process, but they usually can’t dictate it.
As I stated in the opening, leading with insights can be very effective. It’s an important enhancement to (but not replacement for) the fundamentals of “solution selling”. We need to create a balance between delivering insights and asking the right questions to gain the necessary insights about the customer’s specific situation. This helps us in a couple of ways: first, we can quickly (but accurately) determine if there is a good mutual fit and if we should continue spending time on this opportunity; it is also the key to a collaborating with the customer to win the deal, deliver true value, and create a trusting relationship and a loyal customer.
Hey, I don’t profess to know it all on this topic (or any topic for that matter) but this is my perspective. What’s yours? I’d love to hear from you!
