In our second post, we discussed the five ways to tell if your sales organization is ready to elevate sales and deploy a higher-level selling approach, called Point of View Selling. Forum’s research shows that in today’s market, this approach makes a big difference – and your organization doesn’t need to have the resources of a Fortune 500 company to implement it. Let’s look at an example of one salesperson at a mid-sized company and how he changed his selling landscape with a point-of-view approach.
Anthony (name changed) is an account manager whose customer is a large multinational retail chain of home improvement stores. He had been managing their account for years and was having trouble developing strong relationships with upper-level management.
When Anthony saw an ad for a sale the retailer was having on drills, he decided to check it out at his local store. When he got to the store, a handwritten sign for the promotional price on the drill didn’t match the price in the ad. It involved a manager and a good deal of time to get the price discrepancy resolved.
Later, Anthony started thinking about the repercussions of his experience on his customer’s business. If one store was experiencing this scenario, others in the chain were most certainly experiencing similar ones. Anthony was able to secure a 15-minute conversation with the chain’s operations director, and he discussed his concerns about the use of handwritten signs and the impact on their business – namely brand reputation and revenue. This piqued the operations director’s interest, and Anthony was given permission to have his team investigate 24 stores to measure the impact of the signs.
When Anthony returned with the data, it showed that the retailer could be losing as much as $23 million for the discrepancies between the ads and the handwritten signs. However, he did not just stop at presenting the problem to the operations director. Anthony also provided a solution that involved both soft and hardware changes that would unify the corporate-set pricing and ensure that it would be implemented throughout all stores.
Instead of simply relying on his existing relationships within this major retailer, Anthony was able to immediately build rapport with someone higher in the organization by solving a problem that they didn’t know they had. By discovering this problem on his own, he built credibility and a compelling point of view, which his customer had to pay attention to, and gave them an almost immediate return on their investment with Anthony’s organization.
Here are three important lessons learned from the above story, which you can use to take your selling skills to the next level:
- Develop unique points of view. To get time with senior buyers, you can no longer walk in with questions. You will need to be prepared to present an opportunity or risk that was not self-evident to them, a new vision of the future, and the path to connect those two. You should also be ready to present solutions of your own and work with the senior buyer to tailor that solution to his needs.
- Provoke interests. This is the time to grab the senior buyer’s attention. When you present to these buyers, have a story and visuals to make your story impactful. Be prepared for some tension in this phase. Embrace it because it indicates that you’re capturing the senior buyer’s interests.
- Catalyze decisions. Don’t just pitch your product. Now that you’re engaging with the right stakeholders, show them viable solutions to guide them through the decision making process.
Point of View Selling is not just about offering a unique perspective about an organization’s industry or finding a problem; it’s about devising insightful solutions that tackle complex challenges.
Alyson Brandt is executive vice president and general manager, Americas Region, of The Forum Corporation, a Boston-based training and development organization.