How to Skyrocket Conversions With A Value-based Sales Strategy

“Approach each customer with the idea of helping him or her solve a problem or achieve a goal, not of selling a product or service”

One of the most important parameter in sales is forecasting! And, to be honest, if someone asked me whether I wanted to pursue my career in sales 7 years back, I would have simply laughed. Well, little did I know, the joke’s on me.

I have worn several hats while serving at the customer front and in my current avatar, I am heading Sales & Sales Engineering functions at a booming mid-market SaaS company, WebEngage. Coming from an engineering background, I always considered coding as my go-to skillset and while I was decent at it, glad to realise very soon that it ain’t my passion! Having said that, my technical knowledge has often given me an edge in terms of understanding customer’s problem statement in depth, aligning varied stakeholders and proposing layman solutions to complex business scenarios.

Selling is really about having conversations with people and helping improve their company or their life. If you look at it like that, selling is an incredibly admiring thing to do. As Robert Kiyosaki rightly acknowledged in his book, Rich Dad Poor Dad — Everyone should learn the art of selling, be it a writer, techie or an art gallery owner. Having a skillset of selling can increase one’s worth drastically. If you see the title he is accredited with, it’s “Best Selling Author” & not “Best Writing Author” because he is an amazing salesman. He sold & articulated the idea & value of his words more than most of them out there.

“If people like you, they will listen to you. But if they trust you, they will do business with you. “ — Zig Ziglar

A classic example of this is how I executed my first ever closure as a freelancer during my college days. A big client trusting a kid with no prior concrete experience with their website and paying a premium price even though cheaper alternatives in the market were available. The client knew me through a connect, hence, fortunately, lead was warm. However, to get him to take me seriously, I had to ensure that I don’t mess even a single chance to showcase him the value proposition of associating with me. Having burned his hands earlier, the client had a big problem trusting people, hence, all my energy was focused on earning the same since I knew that rest will follow thereafter. And, it did! To top that, he even referred me to couple of more prospects. Key takeaways from this closure — Understand, Listen, Adapt & Execute! Extensive research, defining specific problem statements and a lot of solution selling along with proactive & disciplined approach did the trick! So, you get the gist.

Sales is an outcome, not a goal. It’s a function of doing numerous things right, starting from the moment you focus on a potential prospect until you finalise the deal. And, believe me, there is no one way of closing a deal. I always relate closure in sales to solving a problem in mathematics. There are varied ways for you to arrive at a solution, it completely depends on you with respect to the approach you wish to take. Well, I am no Sales guru! Most of my experience & insights are based on building & scaling WebEngage for more than 4+ years along with freelancing, couple of client servicing roles & a very short stint as an Entrepreneur in my early days. Be it weekly review meetings or daily stand-ups or quarterly closure sync-ups with the team, one thing that is common across all of them is my emphasis towards value based selling. Hence, I am sharing the four broad mantras that have always worked for me — Research, Asking the right questions, Solutionising & Execution.

1. Research

Research is directly proportional to the first impression you leave on the end client. You don’t need a big close, as many sales reps believe. You risk losing your customer when you save all the good stuff for the end. Instead, break the ice with them by sending your extensive observations / inferences before a big call or a meeting & subtly let them know on how your proposition is going to optimise their current process or help them solve business problems which they may or may not be facing. There is nothing to lose here — your meeting is anyway set. All you are doing is sharing your thought process, experience, appreciation & subtle selling parameters. However, from client’s perspective, such preparation & effort is definitely appreciated since it portrays traits like professionalism, unswerving attention & sincerity.

Apart from this, before the call, research the structure of the organisation, the industry, and recent developments; you always want to go into a meeting as prepared as possible. Create a value pitch depending upon the type of customer you are dealing with. Make sure your pitch is in line with what they might buy.

2. Asking the right questions

The questions you ask help you uncover end customer’s needs & desires, connect with them, and demonstrate your expertise. By asking questions, you can discover the customer’s buying process. It also allows you to qualify the sale and ensures that you and the end customer are on the same page at any given time. The questions you ask not only provide you with a treasure trove of important information, but they can also differentiate you from the sea of sellers vying for the buyer’s attention.

You need to understand what’s going on in the buyer’s company, their needs and desires, and their expectations so that you can propose the best solution. Hence, my suggestion would be to start with open ended questions. It gets buyers talking and is a great way to get vital information. There are no “correct answers” with open questions. If you need more information about a particular point, you can always ask follow-up questions.

While I am personally not a big fan of Closed-ended questions, they are particularly helpful for diagnosis and ruling things out. A closed ended question forces the prospect to take a position. “Do you like what I’ve shown you?” “Does this make sense to you, so far?” “Would you like to get started on this right away?” You use this type of question when you want to get clear answers and bring the sales conversation to a close.

There are varied other ways you could gather additional insights and as a sales rep, one has to adapt as per the situation. Thus, learning the right timing to ask each type of question is pivotal.

3. Solutionising

Based on research from HubSpot, only 3% of buyers trust sales representatives. And you stand no chance of reversing that statistic if you deliver a run-of-the-mill pitch that shows prospects you care more about earning money than finding a solution to their problems. If you are looking at your prospects as transactional deals, stop it right there! Buyers won’t engage with sales reps who pitch product, but they will give access to trusted advisors / consultants. Be a solutions consultant!

A solution selling process differs from a more traditional sales process because, instead of just pushing a product, the seller focuses on a specific issue or problem the customer faces and suggests corresponding services or products to solve that issue. Solution selling becomes much easier if you have already performed the first two mantras diligently. In my experience, if you are able to strike a chord, derive value for the buyer and showcase what will change in their lives if they come on-board, you have won 70% of the battle! The most important part — it has to be believable and backed by data. You can easily reframe your sales pitch to focus less on what your product does and more on how it can solve or alleviate an issue. Just think of yourself as less of a salesperson and more of a consultant.

Depending on the audience you are catering, your value pitch approach around solution selling should vary. If I am dealing with mid-level & execution level folks of the company, I will deep dive into the problems and give them a walk-through around implementations too. However, the same approach would change to showcasing only macros and expected top-line ROI numbers, if C-level execs or senior management are a part of the call or a meeting.

The most important part of solutionising is Education. Here is where the real difference between the traditional sales process and the solution selling process becomes apparent. You need to give the client tangible reasons for not only why their business needs your service but also how their business will benefit. You might even consider preparing an example or a case study of a current or past client to demonstrate your solution in action.

4. Execution

Listen to any remaining objections, counter those objections with benefit-driven responses, and move on to the close or next step. Take a cue from your potential client and decide whether the situation calls for a hard, direct close or a more informal close. Always bring it back to why this customer needs your service. Negotiation can sometimes get ugly, hence, don’t look at negotiation in sales as a competitive, win-lose battle where you inevitably cave into bad deals in order to avoid conflict. Remember that your counterparts are human beings and not just another sale. Hence, adding human element during negotiation can strengthen your point. Expressing appreciation can help to open up your counterparts during the negotiation process. Highlighting key points in what they are trying to communicate shows that you are listening. Listening is the key to executing a closure!

The second part of execution is to ensure clean, crisp & transparent contracts. You must have an understanding of their decision making cycle, timelines around closure of legal documents since, believe it or not, more than 20% deals never see the light of association kick-off due to legal obligations and what not. Hence, asking right questions and gathering varied nitty-gritty in the initial phase is extremely crucial.

As I mentioned earlier, there is no one way to sell. Each deal, whether you win or lose, gives innumerable learnings. As per my understanding, it’s always good have a standard practice in place, which provides you a base and formula to win deals. For rest, you analyse with data and tweak your strategies accordingly. The aforementioned steps / stages / mantras have given me good wins and hence, I thought of sharing with you all. I learn something new everyday, so, there are endless possibilities of change and updation to these mantras. How about you? I would love to know your mantras of selling :)

Until next..