The article is from August 2012, but is quite email data enlightening on many points. Written almost 4 years ago now, it praises an alternative sales method, based not on selling "solutions" that would solve problems that the customer is already aware of, but on providing support to find these problems.
The authors begin with an eloquent statistic: 60% of the decision-making process is carried out before the first contact with a seller. This is even more true today than in 2012, with the information available on the Internet.
Hence the effectiveness of content marketing and lead generation !
Selling is no longer just about offering solutions to prospects, since they are already aware of the options available.
According to the authors, we should rather seek to highlight the problems encountered by customers, those of which they are not aware: either because they have not yet occurred, or because they do not have the necessary perspective to see that they are already present!
However, to succeed in changing the paradigm, it is necessary to change the way in which we train and support salespeople. The authors of the article therefore propose 3 strategies:
Change the evaluation of prospects;
Focus on other types of interlocutors;
Coach them on how they buy.
According to the article and its authors, this new way of selling requires evaluating prospects differently.
Traditional sales looks for 3 qualities in a prospect:
a need for change;
a clear vision of needs;
established decision-making processes.
On the contrary, the authors advocate the establishment of two new criteria:
agility;
an emerging need.
The goal is to find prospects whose emerging need and ease of decision-making lead them to seek answers and consider all available options.
Instead of considering whether the prospect can buy , it is better to know whether he can switch . This is the concept of “emerging demand” that ties it all together.