Today, by the time a B2B sales professional meets with a buyer, that
buyer has already reviewed a vast amount of information about potential
solutions to address their problem or need – through online searches, inbound
emails, social media, etc. In fact, according to SiriusDecisions, 67% of the
buyer’s journey is now done digitally.
What this means for sales professionals is that understanding your buyer
– knowing what they know, understanding their needs, and learning how they buy
- has never been more important.
In her recent blog, Three New Facts You Need to Know about Your Buyer’s Journey, Alison Murdock, VP of Marketing at 6sense, highlighted
three distinct buying scenarios, differentiated mainly by decision process,
length of sales cycle, and purchase price. To succeed in selling into any one of
these scenarios, sales professionals need to ask the right questions to
determine their target’s buying scenario, and then map their approach and sales
activities accordingly.
With control of the sales cycle now shifting to the buyer (Murdock:
“The buyer is now in the driver’s seat”) it’s a good time for sales managers
and teams to assess strengths and development areas in light of the new
paradigm. What are the effective sales qualities and sales behaviors that will
help sales professionals meet the client where they are in their buyer’s
journey, rather than just checking boxes on the sales cycle worksheet?
Lumina Learning provides a research-based sales assessment, a state-of-the-art
development tool based on the latest market research, called Lumina Sales. Lumina Sales provides sales professionals
with a highly customized report based their own personal strengths and
weaknesses. Lumina Sales looks at 24 qualities of effective sales people, such
as “competitor savvy”, “proactive networking”, “methodical prospecting”, and “reflective
understanding” and assesses for the individual which of those qualities come
naturally and which need development. The 24 qualities are mapped to a
six-stage sales cycle, which is then mapped to the corresponding stages in a
buyer’s cycle. With this information,
the sales professional, and their leader, can identify and address gaps that
may be impacting sales success. For example, reflective understanding is a
quality tied to “understand needs” in the sales cycle, and “buyer defines
requirements & criteria” in the buyer’s cycle. If the sales professional is weak in fully
understanding the client’s goals and needs, they may struggle in adequately
qualifying the client, or propose a solution that doesn’t directly meet their
needs.
Something that sets Lumina apart from other assessments is its
identification of “overextended” behaviors. Overextended behaviors are those
behaviors which, when under pressure or in stressful situations, become “too
much of a good thing.” For example, when “competitor savvy” becomes “I-know-best
research”; or when “stimulating ideas” become “creative overload”; or when
“decisive close” becomes “forcing the close.” Understanding the triggers for
these overextended behaviors, and which of the stages in the sales and buyer’s
cycles are impacted by those behaviors, are key to creating an effective
development plan and achieving sales success.
If you’d like to learn more about how Lumina Sales can improve your
ability to adapt to your buyer’s journey and achieve sales success, please
contact me at info-us@luminalearning.com
or 888.827.8855.
