To get the year rolling, B2B Books has chosen this short
article from the Harvard Business Review. In
a Downturn, Provoke Your Customers, offers an alternative and fresh
perspective on sales acquisition during hard economic times. Solution Selling
is directly challenged as a somewhat antiquated niche sales methodology, which
does not work well enough in all scenarios.
Provocation selling follows a series of stages:
- Identify a critical issue – great in depth company research to know company inside out and hence identify a strategic issue the sales professional’s company can address.
- Formulate your provocation – create an original point of view that will stimulate interest from C-Level decision makers.
- Lodge your provocation – develop a presentation that demonstrates and clarifies the specific challenge faced by the company. Additionally, establish the sales professional’s deep understanding of the company.
- Prove your point – a diagnostic study to investigate the challenge illuminating related issues and gaining internal momentum for continued problem resolution.
When considering solution selling the notion is to aid
clients to articulate existing problems and the implications of those problems
as they align with the solution to be presented. In contrast, Provocation
selling requires the presentation of an impactful problem statement that
challenges the prevailing point of view and which the sales professional has
developed base upon in depth research and analysis accomplished on the target
company.
Given that Provocation selling is aimed at the C-Level the
initial challenge of the status quo is directed at overall business strategy and
needs to be handled with a delicate confidence which inspires further budget
for examination of the issues facing the client. Moreover, and this is quite
interesting, the level of interest garnered from a skillfully delivered
presentation should result in a revenue stream to accomplish an in depth
analysis of the issue within the company. This is turn puts the sales professional
in a C-Level sponsored leadership and influence role to force even more issues
to the surface and entrench him in the account as a trusted advisor.
Looking at the article as a whole, Provocation selling
requires an immense amount of time intensive research to gain the necessary
knowledge to lodge an impactful challenge. This method is definitely structured
toward enterprise level companies lacking sufficient budget for new endeavors.
It would be well suited to long-term sales cycles of companies who sell
strategically critical products from the C-Level perspective.
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