Adapting Your Sales Approach to the Buyer’s Journey

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.