Keenan: Gap Selling

Know the Game

Welcome to the Game

It’s Not That You Can’t Sell — It’s That You Can’t Diagnose

You aren’t losing sales because you can’t sell. You’re losing them because you don’t understand how to diagnose your customer problem (s) and how the problem (s) drive the sale. Your product doesn’t drive the sale. The problem does, and if you can’t diagnose the problem, no sales skill or any other sales training is going to help you.

Gap selling is going to make you a badass at diagnosing and then it’s going to change the way you sell after identifying the problem.

According to CSO Insights World Class Sales Practices Report, only 53 % of salespeople in 2016 attained quota, down from 63 % in 2012. i What’s going on? Part of the problem is that salespeople have become overly reliant on selling tools. They are also victims of unrealistic sales quotas, poor sales management, and the absence of a formal sales process.

At the heart of every sale, there’s a gap. It’s a gap between what buyers have now and what they believe they want in the future, between who they are now and who they want to be tomorrow, or even where they are now and where they want to go. This gap represents the value of the sale to the buyer and the salesperson. Without it, there is no sale.

“Read” prospects’ minds during discovery.
Identify and even anticipate buyers’ unique needs and problems.
Influence the change process.
Maximize your value as a resource.
Better service your customers and put their needs first.
Create a sense of urgency.
Improve close rates.
Prevent unnecessary complications.
Improve predictability.

It’s not about pitching products and services; it’s about solving problems and making people’s lives easier.

The Nine Truthbombs of Selling

How the nine truths of selling play out in every sales transaction you’ll ever engage in. They are:

No problem, no sale.
In every sale there’s a gap.
All sales are about change.
Customers don’t like change.
Sales are emotional.
Customers do like change when they feel it’s worth the cost.
Asking “Why?” gets customers to “Yes”.
Sales happen when the future state is a better state.
No one gives a shit about you.

Understanding the problem is so critical because with the problem comes the impact of the problem and the impact defines the size and scope of the problem.

Problems get you to the impact and the impact is where urgency, value, and need live and where the sale takes root.

The worst thing in the world you can do at the beginning of a sale is to take your buyer’s word for granted or sell to a need.

Never sell to need. If you only solve the problem your buyer thinks they have instead of the one they really have, you haven’t helped them at all.

Gap selling is a process of tactfully challenging buyers’ assumptions, exposing (and sometimes confirming) the true size of their problem, then correctly assessing the impact it will have on their lives. The more impact, the larger the gap. And the larger the gap, the more valuable the solution, i.e., your product or service.

Every sale is about change. Change is emotional. Therefore, every sale is emotional. And emotions are complicated.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, bestselling author and professor at Harvard Business School, says there are ten threats that cause people to resist change.

Loss of control.
Excess uncertainty.
Surprises.
Too much change at once.
Loss of face.
Insecurity.
Extra work.
The ripple effect.
Past resentments.
Real danger.

Humans feel positive emotions when they believe they are in control of their surroundings.

Closing a sale is about helping customers feel safe enough to lay their defenses down and share their problems, then getting them to a point where they feel secure and confident enough to admit they’re ready for change — either to something better, or to get away from something painful. They have to come to believe the change will be worth it.

The only time we are compelled to let go of the old, stick out our necks, and embrace change is when we can envision an improved future state over our current state , and when we believe that the benefits of that future state outweigh the cost of getting there, the effort it will require or the possible pain we will suffer.

Knowing your customer’s intrinsic motivation allows you to solve for the problems your customers didn’t know they had. Getting to the bottom of your customers’ intrinsic motivation for change takes time and patience.

If you find out that your product can’t fulfill a customer’s intrinsic motivation, walk away from the sale. Never sell something that can’t deliver.

Mentioning your place on the Fortune 500 will not get you any closer to the sale. In fact, every time you talk about yourself, you risk triggering those change-resistant, emotionally fraught thoughts and feelings in your customers.

The only thing that inches you toward a sale is proving that you understand your customers’ problems and the impact of those problems, that you know why they’re struggling, that you understand why they’re not happy with their current state, that you hold the key to moving them to the future state they desire, and that the change they are facing will be worth the money and effort it takes to get there. They want to learn how you can help them grow revenue, decrease production time, improve their communication or speed up their delivery. They want to know how you’re going to make their lives better.

You can’t sell a future state (where your customer wants to be) unless you have a firm grasp on your customer’s current state (where your customer is now).

A Problem Identification Chart. On a sheet of paper, you’ll write down every problem your product or service can solve for your prospects and customers. First, make a column and call it “Problems.” Then, you’ll create a column called “Impact.” In this column, you’ll list the impact those problems could have on a customer, should they exist. Finally, in a third column called “Root Cause,” you’ll list the root causes of the problems you mentioned in the first column. The root causes are why the problems exist in the first place.

We’re In the Show-Me Economy. We are now in the show-me economy. The tell-me economy is dead, over. So, if you’re still trying to “tell” your prospect what you do, what your product does, and why you matter, you’re wasting their time. And in today’s world, prospects are not keen on having their time wasted.

Today, social platforms allow us to show the world the value we provide. We don’t need to tell them about ourselves face-to-face; they know before we meet them.

Selling is a giving profession. Every time you engage with a customer, or send an email, or create something, you have to ask yourself, “What am I giving?” The answer should be “industry information,” or “insight into the market,” or “tips that will make their jobs easier,” or “the solution to a problem they haven’t been able to solve.” It should never be, “More information about myself.”

The Current State–Where the Customers Are

Everything we do, whether we’re six months old or sixty years old, is influenced by an invisible backdrop of events, feelings, and biases that affect the way we perceive the world and react to each other. They all play into the creation of our current state. Your customers have a current state, too, that includes everything we’ve talked about so far — their feelings about change, their intrinsic motivations, the realities of their business, and the facts of their work lives. Their current state is the world they live in, their perceived reality.

To put the rules of gap selling into play requires that you gain a deep comprehension of your customers’ current state and the opportunities it represents for a better future state.

The current state acts as the anchor, or the catalyst for change.

There is a direct correlation between how much a salesperson knows about their buyer’s current state and the probability they will win the deal.

The current state is what lets us see not only the problem, but also the real issues for each specific buyer. The current state is the unique identifier for every prospect in your pipeline.

The current state is made up of five critical elements that help construct your understanding of your customers’ world in a way that will help you help them manage the change they are about to experience: the literal and physical facts about your customer their problems the impact of those problems the root causes of the problems what effect those problems are having on your customers’ emotional state.

Every customer faces unique challenges. By understanding the unique conditions of each of your prospects’ current environment and their current state, however, you will be able to develop specific, customized selling strategies for each of the prospects in your pipeline.

People don’t buy products — they buy solutions to their problems. If they can’t recognize at least one clearly defined, measurable problem, your buyer will not buy.

Problems are only problems when the impact is negative and uncomfortable.

Keep this firmly in mind: You’re never selling a product. You’re selling the impact your product will have on your buyer’s current environment. You’re selling change.

Once you know which root cause is the culprit, you’ll know the appropriate solution.

You want to be the astute, reassuring expert who knows how to solve the problem because you know why the problem exists.

The Future State–Where Customers Want to Go

When it comes to change, the current state represents the pain, and the future state represents the pleasure. Your customers’ current state maps their future state. Once you understand your customers’ current state problems, you can start to work with them to paint a picture of what the future state could look like when those current state problems have been addressed. That’s how you’ll find the next piece of information you’re looking for — the opportunities.

You can find out by asking these two questions: What is the buyer looking to accomplish? and What would solving these problems mean to their organization, their employees, and to them? The key to answering these questions is to have a conversation with your customer that helps them envision and articulate what their world would look like if all their current state problems disappeared.

By working to understand the customer’s desired future state, you begin to build the gap. The future state acts as a contrast to the current state. Without the future state, it’s difficult to calculate the value of the deal.

While you’re at it, you also want to understand how your customers will feel once their problems have been addressed. Why? Because getting people to imagine their emotions in the future, as well as bringing their dreams and desired outcomes into focus, will anchor them in that future.

Establishing your customers’ current state (pain) while anchoring them in the future state (pleasure) primes them to be open to, and even enthusiastic about, allowing you to help them plan for the journey that will take them across the chasm. As you help them see the gap they have to cross, they’ll determine the value of filling it.

That’s the magic of gap selling.

Relationships Don’t Matter (Kinda)

Ok, people, you’ve heard it your whole career: People buy from people they like. I call bullshit. And if you want to gap sell, you will too.

People buy from people they like. Willy Loman, protagonist of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, was sure of it.

Willy Loman had to learn the hard way, unfortunately, that likeability is no substitute for talent or expertise. Likeability gets you a handshake, a smile, and maybe a warm and fuzzy feeling. Expertise makes you money. Because you know who people do buy from? Those who provide value.

It’s not that relationships aren’t important. They are. After all, no one wants to do business with someone they can’t stand . But it’s not why people buy. With all things being equal, buyers will go with whom they like, but rarely are all things equal.

What creates the types of relationships that generate value and drive you closer to the sale? Credibility. Every step you make in the gap-selling process is about building credibility and establishing yourself as a trustworthy expert.

Like me, Dixon and Adamson insist that the findings don’t imply that relationships don’t matter. Rather, they suggest that it’s the type of relationship that matters. Buyers want to have a good experience with their sales reps, but ultimately, they’re looking for trustworthy advice and guidance.

Another study, conducted by Dave Kurlan, principal of Objective Management Group, reveals that salespeople who have a strong need to be liked actually hurt their selling efficacy. Salespeople who spend extra time trying to be liked — because, you know, people buy from people they like — hurt their selling efficacy. Kurlan claims that there are six core competencies in sales DNA, the first of which (and the only one relevant to our discussion) is: Doesn’t Need Approval. Kurlan compared salespeople’s need to be liked with their belief that relationships are important.

Gap selling puts a priority on building relationships based on credibility, not likability.

The Gap Defined

The thing is, the gap is rarely clear to buyers initially. The win then becomes your ability to expose and shape the gap. Salespeople can manipulate the size of the gap by helping the buyer see things they didn’t see before. There is no way customers can understand the value of your life-saving pill if they don’t realize they are dying.

You’re not selling when you ask your customers questions about their current and future states. What you’re actually doing is expanding their perception of their problem and the perceived outcome of solving the problem.

How to play the game

Get Them to Let You Help

Your number one job when selling is to get the customer, buyer, or prospect to let you help them.

No matter what you’re selling, until you can get buyers to trust you enough to be vulnerable, open up, share information, offer your insight into their current state, and expressly ask you for your help, you will not make progress.

What about RFPs? Nope. Bidding on an RFP is not selling, it’s participating in a beauty contest. The only thing a buyer who submits an RFP is paying attention to is which boxes you can check off of their list of requirements.

Discovery: Know Your Clients Better Than They Know Themselves

Stop qualifying opportunities using B.A.N.T. Like everything else about gap selling, the gap-selling discovery takes a completely different tack from a traditional discovery.

The objective of B.A.N.T. is to keep salespeople from spending time on deals that won’t close.

Basing someone’s potential to be a customer on their budget assumes the customer knows he has a problem and knows there’s a solution available. In many cases, a budget is merely a starting point.

People find the budget for big gaps.

Unless you’re selling a $ 1000-or-less product, there is no such thing as a single decision maker anymore. According to Gartner (formerly CEB Global), as of 2014 there are at least 5.4 decision makers per B2B sale.

Today, authority is a committee of influencers, champions, mobilizers, and more. Don’t hang your qualification process on one individual.

Gap sellers don’t sell to need, they sell to problems. Just because customers don’t think they need anything doesn’t mean they actually don’t.

Gap sellers never take their prospects’ word for granted when it comes to their needs. Ever.

Timing is fluid and can change at a moment’s notice for a number of sales-driven reasons, including how well you sell and position your solution, in-house dynamics, and external factors such as the economy or a move by the competition. But again, just because a prospect doesn’t think now is a good time to buy doesn’t mean they’re right.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t qualify your prospect! I’m saying you should do it differently than B.A.N.T or any other approach.

The Close Happens at the Beginning.

Every step of the sale is contingent on you getting the right information via the discovery process. How you proceed during this moment will set the stage for success or failure.

The sale is won or lost during the discovery. If you don’t get enough information, miss a few key points, misdiagnose the problem, incorrectly assess the problem, miss the customer’s desired future state, miscalculate the gap — any of these and more can doom the sale. The sale is won at the beginning, not the end.

Closing skills like the assumptive close, the option close, the urgency close — all these close techniques are a waste of time. They only serve to put you first and aren’t focused on the customer or prospect.

In his blog post titled Closing Techniques in Sales are Dead — Here’s Why, Chris Orlob, senior director of product marketing at Gong.Io, published the results of an analysis his company did of more than one million sales calls. You know what they found? Closing calls sounded essentially the same whether the seller made the deal or lost it.

The number of questions you ask early in the sale cycle increases your chance of making the deal. The close happens at the beginning, not at the end. Gap selling is all about asking questions to get to current and future states.

Know the Problem First, Call Second.

Spending any time on problems you can’t solve is a waste of your time. First, make a list of all the potential problems your clients could be facing that you could solve.

Next, you’re going to fill in the Impact column. What potential impact could all of those problems you just listed have on a customer?

Finally, you’re going to list the root causes of all those problems. Remember, this is the column that is going to allow you to prove your credibility and expertise.

Throughout it, you’re going to be asking several types of questions:

Probing: These are open-ended questions that press for specific details.
Process: These are open-ended questions that ask “How?”.
Provoking: These are open – ended questions that gently push customers to consider their current state from a new perspective.
Validating: Not open-ended questions! Instead, these simply allow you to repeat information you gather back to your customer to make sure you’ve correctly understood everything they’ve told you.

Steps:

Discover the Facts. You’ll start by asking as many probing questions as possible. Your goal at this initial stage is to record all the literal, physical facts about the business and your customer. You’re going to use what sales influencer and author Deborah Calvert calls “command statement starter words”: “Tell me a little bit about the events you put on.” “Help me understand …”. “Could you please describe …?”. “Could you walk me through …?”. Every time you delve for information, it should feel like a friendly conversation. Deb Calvert’s book Discover Questions Get You Connected is a great resource. Beyond probing questions, you want to ask process questions which try to get information on how your customers do what they do. Keep in mind, process questions are not just about the high-level answers, but the specific steps in how they do it. Without asking these types of process questions, we can’t learn how and where you can bring value.
Discover the Problems. At its best, this line of questioning can lead you to point out a problem that your customers might not have even realized they had. During your discovery process, pay attention and look for holes that suggest potentially weak business processes and missed opportunities so that later, you’ll be able to suggest some alternative, better options. Understanding your customers’ processes will also prove incredibly helpful when you run into customer objections. Something that is too often overlooked in traditional sales training is how to press your customer or prospect to be specific. Open-ended answers are unacceptable. Open-ended answers are unquantified answers. Vague answers. Answers that leave you guessing. Patience is key. Don’t rush to the sell. There will be plenty of time to sell. Go deeper.
Discover the Impact. Provoking questions aren’t just meant to challenge the buyer, but rather get them to think about their problems in new ways. Some provoking questions you could try: What happens when you …? Has there ever been a time when …? If you did X, what do you think would happen? These questions are designed to challenge your customers to evaluate not just what is happening, but why it’s happening. Guiding your customers to take note of the impact that various problems are having on their business isn’t just another fact – finding expedition — it’s going to force them to recognize the level of urgency with which they need to treat these problems. No one takes well to scare tactics, so you’re not going to tell your customers any bad news. Instead, you’re going to let them figure out the damage for themselves. Again, you’re going to use command statement starter words: “Tell me how this issue is affecting you.” “Can you describe the impact it’s having on your department?” “What are the consequences every time this problem occurs?” When it comes to problems, there are two types: technical problems and business problems. Technical problems are related to the technology or underlying processes that drive the business and assist in its operation. Technical problems prevent the business from operating efficiently. The thing is, most salespeople focus on solving the technical problems when it’s the business problems that create a customer’s unique buying motivations and lead to the biggest gaps. The technical problem isn’t going to drive the sale; it’s the conversation starter. The business problem is what is going to drive the sale, so you need to understand it and how it uniquely presents itself within your buyer’s company. No two prospects will ever have the same business problem. It’s impossible. Your prospects can have the same technical problem(s), but never, ever, the same business problems. The business problem provides the motivation for change. You’re looking for the “holy shit” of outcomes.
Discover the root cause. Now that you know what the problems are and you know the impact they are having on your customer, you need to make sure you and your buyer fully understand why they occur — their root cause. Often these will be technical problems, but not always. You could ask: “Why do you think this problem is happening?” “How do you think your current processes are affecting this?” “How has the implementation of this product affected your business?” While you’re going through this discovery process, don’t forget to pepper your conversation with plenty of validating questions. Validation is a common communication strategy promoted by psychologists to strengthen personal relationships. A validating question might be something like, “What I hear you saying is that you could raise a lot more revenue if you had a pool of more people to sell tickets to.” (Other validating questions could be, “Am I understanding you correctly?” or “Did I get this right?”) Validating questions ensure you and the buyer are on the same page and that what you heard is what they meant. While choice of words is supremely important, equally important to any communication is how and when you choose to talk. I want you to pay close attention to two other ingredients necessary to a killer discovery: Tone. Tone is fundamental to good human communication. The right tone is not only critical for getting people to trust you enough to give you the information you want to know, but also for getting them to hear you in the first place. Timing. Timing matters. Just because you can ask a question, it doesn’t mean you should. Remember, the point of the discovery exercise isn’t to ask questions but to get information.

When you are done with these four discovery steps — you understand the facts of your customers’ business, you’ve identified their problems, assessed the impact those problems are having on the business, and pinpointed the root cause of the problems — you’ll have qualified the opportunity.

Four simple questions: Does the prospect have a problem you can fix? Does the prospect agree they have a problem? Does the prospect want to fix the problem? Will the prospect go on a journey with you to fix the problem?

David Hume said, “Reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will.” Unless your customers feel strongly about the value of the change you’re proposing, they will not move closer to the sale.

Qnce you know the future state, you’re no longer selling a mere product or service; you’re selling a desired outcome.

Remember, you’re never truly done with discovery. As time goes on, your customer may bring other buyers into the game and when that happens, you’ll have to engage in this process all over again.

Using a CRM isn’t a new idea, but most salespeople don’t go deep enough with it, entering only high-level information into the CRM, if they enter anything at all.

The CRM Challenge is all about making sure you gather and document so much identifiable information about your buyers’ problems that your discovery notes would make it crystal-clear which opportunity it was without you ever having to look at identifying data, or even the industry.

If you’ve asked your questions correctly, the data you collect on the opportunity will be unique; there will be only one possibility of who it could be. No one company has the same problem or impact.

I’m often asked for a list of sure-fire questions people can ask to nail the discovery and get the right information out of their customers. The truth is, I can’t give you one. I can explain the purpose of probing, process, provoking, and validating questions, but there is no gap-selling discovery script.

A gap-selling discovery process completely alters the traditional selling relationship. It used to be almost adversarial; you versus the customer. The gap-selling relationship is collaborative.

Is the Gap Worth It?

Future State – Current State = The Gap

Good salespeople are patient — they don’t just have the patience for the work; they embrace it. They understand that the success or failure of the sale is deeply rooted in getting as much information as possible so they can clearly identify the gap.

Drill deep enough so that you know enough about your customer’s organization that you can confidently and credibly offer near-irrefutable advice, insight, and direction. That is the most reliable formula for sales success.

Know Your Customers’ Why

The Value of a Desired Outcome. The sale was no longer based on whether the service or product provided was superior to any other; it was based on the salesperson’s ability to enable the desired outcome.

No salesperson should ever underestimate the value of their service or product to a prospect. You’ll always lose the sale if you assume you’re too expensive because that assumption will stop you from asking the questions that could reveal the true value of your product to your customer.

How do you get to the heart of that motivation? After summarizing everything your customers tell you about their current state and what they want to see in their future state, try saying this: “Tell me a bit about what is driving this change.” If you’ve been gap selling until this point, your customers will be honest with you. The answer you receive will give you a distinct and important edge over the competition by providing you with the last detail you need to perfectly customize and fine-tune your sale. It lays out a path to the close no one else will be able to see.

When you can get to the heart of why your customer wants to buy, you get to the heart of the sale.

You know your customers’ current state, future state, and intrinsic motivation. Now you have permission to start talking about your product or service!

If you start selling too early, you’ll miss all the important developmental work that makes gap selling such a winning strategy. You’re launching the sale without a map.

How to Do a Kickass Demo

There are four elements to a kick ass demo. Get them right.

No discovery, no demo. You should never, ever combine a discovery and a demo. A discovery should answer the following questions: Does the prospect have a problem you can fix? Does the prospect agree they have a problem? Does the prospect want to fix the problem? Will the prospect go on a journey with you to fix the problem? If a customer refuses a discovery, inform them that the demo is actually a two-step process, and that without a discovery, it’s impossible to conduct a proper, customized demo.
No ifs. If you have done a thorough discovery, you will know with great certainty what problems your customer is dealing with. That means there will never be a reason to say the word “if,” as in, “If you have this problem, then …” Or, “If you ever struggle with …” There is no “if” during a demo because you’re supposed to already know!
Stick to Six Features. The point of your demo is not to reveal all of your product’s features and functions. It’s to reveal how well your product provides the solution to your buyer’s specific problems.
Anchor. Your Customer Anchoring is a psychological term used to describe a cognitive bias that people use to make decisions. When doing your demo, your goal should be to get your prospects to see your solution as the first and best solution to their problem so that it becomes the baseline against which they judge any other solution. You want your solution to become their anchor. Throughout your presentation, after every feature demo ask your prospect affirming questions. Getting your customer to affirm the value of every feature you present anchors your prospects in your solution and its effect on shaping their future state. There’s another benefit to asking affirming questions or anchoring: It confirms that you’re hitting your mark.

Your customers do not give a shit about your product. What do they care about? They care about how your product is going to solve their problems. That’s it. That’s all!

Customers buy what they value. The more value you can create through your demo, the greater the probability that you will close the deal.

Move Your Deals Through the Pipeline

The next three steps are designed to help you extract all the information needed to establish predictability by allowing you to plan ahead, keep your opportunities on track, and seal the deal every time.

Nail Down their Decision Criteria. If you want to keep your prospects moving through the pipeline and get to the next stage, you have to know their how. The decision criteria are the information and details the customer is going to use to decide which solution they are going to choose. Asking your buyer to outline their decision criteria is key and offers tremendous insight. Do yourself and your customers a solid and confirm that your customers’ decision criteria are aligned with their own desired outcomes and objectives. If they’re not, you need to be prepared to challenge them to make sure their reasoning is robust, or realign them if necessary — but not because they’re taking a different path than the one you think they should. This is important: Your goal here should not be to steer them to where you think you have the best chance of closing the deal, but to make sure they have thought through why they want what they say they want. Make them own their decisions. “I’m confused. You said …” Those four words, in that order, are four of my favorites. They are powerful. I love using them to challenge buyers and prospects. Challenging your customers without tact, diplomacy, or grace can make them feel incompetent, inattentive, or insecure, which is not conducive to the collaborative, enthusiastic mindset you want your customer to have when you’re gap selling. By prefacing your challenge with “I’m confused, you said …” you give buyers a way to save face.
Know the Buying Process. Combine what you know about the decision criteria with the buying process steps to properly build your deal strategy. Knowing your customer’s buying process is like getting a topographic map of the land.
Focus on the Next Yes. A sales cycle should actually look more like a rising staircase than a horizontal straight line. What makes a sale move forward? The word “Yes.” Every single yes you hear from the customer is a renewed agreement to work with you. If you’re not hearing yes,” you’re not approaching the close. Some of these people consider themselves good closers, but that’s not something to brag about. Good closers are bad salespeople. Their whole focus is on the final big Yes. But by remaining fixated on a single big sale, they don’t close all the small sales that need to happen to make the big sale fall into place. Good closers lose a lot of little deals within the sales process.

So checking off those three steps — nailing down the decision criteria, knowing the buying process, and focusing on next yeses (aka the mini-sale within a sale) — will all help to ensure that you can move your deal smoothly through the pipeline.

Too many salespeople believe that the only way to move a sale forward through the pipeline is to cater to customers’ every request or whim, or interpret their reticence to share information as a cue to double down on their efforts. That’s wrong. Just as investors need to weigh their ROI (return on investment) when deciding where to place their money, salespeople need to consider their ROSE (return on sales effort) when judging where to target their energy and time. That often means learning to say no.

While the role of a skilled gap seller is to help the customer feel comfortable and in control, you should never actually lose control of the sale.

If you find yourself afraid of losing the deal, it’s probably a sign you’ve lost control. If you’re feeling fearful, if means you’re not gap selling. Don’t let fear enter the equation. Know your stuff and don’t become the customer’s b * tch.

A sales relationship is like a marriage. You and your customer have to give and take as equals with an eye toward the same goals, or it just won’t work.

Troubleshooting

When a Prospect Goes Dark. If you’ve been gap selling, you’ll have all the information you need to hold your prospects accountable and encourage them to explain themselves. You start with those four little words, “I’m confused. You said …” which highlights the gap between your prospects’ words and actions. In the nicest way possible you’re holding them accountable for their own words and proving that you understand their problem, what it will take to fix it, and the consequences of not fixing it. You’re also pointing out that unless their goals have changed, by avoiding you they are sacrificing their future state and desired outcomes.

Jumpstarting a Stalled Deal. The prospect keeps taking your calls, and keeps reiterating his interest, but the deal is stuck in the pipeline and all you get are excuses. If this happens — and it will — you’ll do the same thing you would do if a deal goes dark: Remind the customer of their current state, their desired future state, and the impact they’re suffering by putting off their desired outcomes.

Overcoming Objections. In general, when you’ve done a good job of assessing the customer’s current state, establishing their future state, and identifying the gap, you should be able to anticipate any major issues before the customer even thinks of them. When you express confusion, customers are naturally going to want to help you understand their thinking, which means they’re going to wind up giving you all the information you need to figure out what to do next. Never defend your product or service. Use gap selling and what you learn in the process to make the buyer defend their objection. Make them tell you why the lack of a particular feature is an issue. Make them tell you why their objection matters in the pursuit of their desired outcome or future state. If you’ve done gap selling right, you’ll quickly discover that more often than not, the objection isn’t real and the customer will get past it quickly.

Price Objections. Don’t let anyone determine the price of what you’re selling. Ever! I’m going say this one more time, because it’s that important: Don’t let anyone determine the price of what your selling based on the product, service, or widget. That’s not what they are buying! They’re buying the outcome of your product, service, or widget.

There are three common price objections customers typically toss out: “It’s too expensive”, “ We don’t have the budget” and “We can’t afford it”. “ It’s too expensive ” – When someone tells you the price of your product or service is too high , remind them of their desired outcomes. After you put the value of the desired outcome back in their lap, just shut up and listen.

“We don’t have the budget” and “We can’t afford it” – If an organization lacks the budget for your product or service, they actually have the money; they just didn’t allocate any of it for the type of purchase you’re proposing. If an organization literally doesn’t have money available to pay for a product or service, there’s not a whole lot a salesperson can do about it, which means it’s time to walk away from the sale.

Gap Prospecting

Prospecting: Getting the First “Yes!”

Gap selling isn’t just a methodology for moving deals through the pipeline; it’s a philosophy for engaging and influencing people, and therefore, it will improve your results in any environment where you are working to influence change.

Jeb Blount’s Fanatical Prospecting and Mark Hunter’s High-Profit Prospecting, great books that offer excellent practical ways to prospect.

When you build your prospecting methodology around gap-selling principles — by putting the customer first; by preparing to solve problems, not talk product; by coming ready to consult, not sell; by leading with value — people are simply going to be more willing to come to the table.

Prospects will be more willing to meet with you because they will see it’s in their best interest to do so.

Smart Prospecting Prep

Build a “Healthy” Pipeline. A pipeline is not a pipeline at all if it’s not a healthy pipeline. What does a healthy pipeline look like? It’s the ratio between your quota, your closing percentage, and the size of your pipeline.
You Have to Know Who You’re Calling. Remember the Problem Identification Chart? You can use the PIC to build an ICP — Ideal Customer Profile. Ask yourself what types of companies would most likely struggle with each set of problems. List their industry, size, the departments that would be affected, and the responsibilities of that department. Then think about who within these departments would suffer the greatest impact from those problems. That’s your ideal customer. Now rank your customers in order from those likely experiencing the highest number of problems causing the greatest amount of pain to those struggling with the lowest number of problems and suffering the least amount of pain. Separate that list into A, B, C, and D. Your A list is composed of the customers who are battling the highest number of problems on your list and suffering the most, too.
Be a Problem Finder.
Think Like a Buyer.

How to Capture Attention

Your success as a salesperson is wholly determined by your ability to get buyers to look and listen. But if you can think like your buyer and you can become a problem solver, then your prospecting is going to be a lot more fruitful.

Phone, Email … Which Medium? Your target buyers should tell you which communication channel would be most effective.

It’s the Message, Stupid. The best messages are those that compel recipients to action. What’s the point of writing a message if no one is going to read it, or worse, if they read it and then don’t take the action you’d like?

Intrigue. Intrigue triggers the “oh-shit” circuit by disrupting predictable patterns in three ways: Surprise, Create mystery, Create a knowledge gap. Prove that you know something the buyer doesn’t about their industry, their business, their competitor, or the products they use. Creating intrigue through a knowledge gap demands that you educate or challenge your buyers, often both.

A Clear, Reasonable Ask. Every single thing you request of your buyer is an ask, whether it’s a tour, an appointment, or thirty seconds to read your email. Are your asks clear? Is the timing right? How much are you asking? Why are you asking that much? Is it appropriate in relation to what you’re offering in exchange? Another trick to getting a yes? Don’t ask for a chance to talk. Ask for a chance to give value.

An Irresistible Offer. Is your offer worth what you’re asking? It better be.

A Net Positive for the Buyer. Offer – Ask = Value

Set the Right Cadence

No matter how solid your message is, how impressive the intrigue, and how valuable the offer, it’s still going to be hard to break through to prospects.

It could take anywhere from 8 – 12 touches for a customer to finally give you some attention. That’s why one of the most critical elements in prospecting is finding the right cadence when you try to make contact.

Cadence isn’t just about the timing of your correspondence, but strategically planning your message and the delivery method.

My research has revealed that 72 % of salespeople who used social media to sell outperformed their peers and exceeded quota 23 % more often than those who didn’t.

Shake the Message Up. Each time you connect, however, you’ll want to emphasize a different impact, or provide a new piece of information, or share a relevant bit of research.

Every sale is made up of hundreds of smaller sales. Every small sale must entail another yes to move nearer to a successful close Prospecting is your shot to get to the first yes. Every prospecting email, call, voice mail, video, and social media post must include: intrigue, a clear and reasonable ask, an offer, and a net benefit to the customer.

Bug Them Without Bugging Them. I never, ever, ever say no for a buyer. I make the buyer say no. When a buyer doesn’t respond and we stop calling and emailing, that’s us saying no for them and that’s a huge mistake. Never say no for your buyer.

Building a Gap-Selling Team

Manage the Pipeline

Great leaders get more out of people than they can get out of themselves. To be a great gap sales leader, you can’t just throw a training methodology at your team and expect them to figure everything out on their own. It is the responsibility of sales managers to provide them with cover and support, to offer guidance, and to check the quality of their data so you can give them the best chance of delivering on their sales goals.

In a 2017 InsideSales Lab study of 151 companies over nine quarters published in the Harvard Business Review, they found that “salespeople close three times as many deals at the end of the month as during the rest of the month — but lose 11 times as many.” You wanna know how much money that adds up to? On average, the companies in their study lost $ 98 million per year in revenue because of the quarterly dip in close rates.

If you don’t have a foolproof way to verify that your team’s pipeline is accurate, predictable, and reliable, you simply can’t manage the organization.

Trust, But Verify. If your salespeople cannot gain influence over their deals, they’re not selling; they’re pitching. They haven’t earned the credibility that would strengthen their influence.

The more credibility you have, the more influence you have over your deals.

Gap-selling sales managers know they’re getting accurate information when they can answer all of these questions in the affirmative:

Do my salespeople understand the customers’ current state? Do they know enough about the literal, physical business? Can they list the customers’ critical problems? Have they accurately assessed their impact on the customers’ organization? Are they cognizant of the buyers’ emotional state? Have they pinpointed the root cause of those problems?
Do my salespeople understand the customers’ future state? Can they articulate the desired outcome? Can they analyze the literal, physical impact of that outcome on the customers’ organization?
Can they identify the gap? Can they explain how they calculated it?
Can they name the customer’s intrinsic motivations for buying?
Can they list the buyers’ decision-making criteria?
Can they provide evidence that all of this information is accurate?
Do they know what will happen next and when?

Insist on Specific, Definitive Data.

Keep Things Short and Sweet. Be skeptical of the “talker.” You know, the salesperson who takes ten minutes to explain why their deal is a real deal.

Hear the Difference.

The numbers you want to pay attention to are your salespeople’s: Average close rates. Average deal size. Average length of sales cycle. Average number of new deals to the pipeline.

What’s the Next Yes? Help your salespeople figure out what questions they need to ask — if they haven’t asked already — so that they’re always aware of what the next yes is, how it moves the deal forward, and what they are going to need to do to secure it. As a manager, your job is to make sure your salespeople know what the next yes must be, and have a customized deal strategy in mind to get it.

The Healthy Pipeline Checklist. You know you have a healthy pipeline if your salespeople can provide: Accurate close dates (within 30 days). Accurate quarterly commits within 15 % on either side. Clear next steps (the next yes). Clear deal strategies. Adequate pipeline coverage (the pipeline will allow them to meet their commit and quota). Evidence for all of the above.

Build a Commit Culture

Over and over we’ve highlighted how gap selling improves a salesperson’s predictability.

But if you want to encourage rock-solid predictability throughout your organization, you can build it right into the foundations by encouraging a commit culture. In a commit culture, salespeople are nurtured and coached, but they’re also expected to take ownership of their numbers — to commit to them.

A commit culture can only exist when you truly understand all the elements of gap selling: the current state, the future state, the gap, the intrinsic motivations, the desired outcomes, and the buyer’s decision criteria.

Surprise is the enemy of a sales leader.

Now, here’s where developing a commit culture gets difficult. You have to let your salespeople commit to whatever number they believe is accurate. You cannot, I repeat, cannot tell them to change it or go find more opportunities. Commit is an accuracy game, not a goal game.

Challenge, Then Accept. Your salespeople should always be prepared to defend their answers, whether you’re examining their discovery or questioning their financial goals. Giving people ownership over their commitment is critical to a strong sales organization. Management cannot own it for them or the whole team will fall apart.

Reality is Critical. The best sales managers confront reality ahead of time. They want to know the truth, even if it hurts.

Whether you’re selling or sales managing, gap selling will always be your paddle if you or your team find yourselves up the creek. The sale is always in the information.

Hire the Right People

Gap selling is a very different type of sales methodology. It’s not about aggressively pitching product, or mad persuasion skills, or charm. Gap sellers, therefore, are a very different type of seller.

The nine gap-selling traits they embody: curiosity, critical thinking, empathy, problem-solving, leadership, creativity, deliberate learning, coachability, business acumen.

The Nine Qualities of a Gap Seller:

Curiosity. Gap salespeople have an innate curiosity that predisposes them to ask questions all the time.
Critical Thinking. Critical thinkers will know how to gently challenge their customers to make sure that they know what they think they know, that the status quo is working the way they say it is, that the future state they say they desire will do what they believe it will, and that they fully understand the impact all of their decisions will have on their organizations.
Empathy.
Problem Solving. Remember, gap selling is not actually about selling; it’s about fixing problems!
Leadership. Gap selling is close, collaborative work.
Creativity. Like artists, creative salespeople have a special skill for solving problems, seeing different ways to accomplish goals, address objections, mitigate risk and overcome roadblocks.
Deliberate Learning. Quite frankly, in an era where news, tech and innovation breakthroughs and fresh industry updates are available to us in the blink of a notification or the quick tap of a Google search, it’s inexcusable for anyone to plead ignorance about . . . gosh, anything.
Coachability. The willingness to be coached usually goes hand in hand with curiosity and an interest in deliberate learning. Not everyone is coachable, but those who are make excellent salespeople. Hire them.
Business Acumen.

It’s Not About You

Just as gap selling isn’t about the salesperson but about the customer, being a sales leader isn’t about getting what you need out of your sales team but about providing what your sales team needs to get out of you. They need your guidance, your feedback, your direction and your inspiration.

In a study released in their book The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson of CEB (now Gartner) revealed that 53 % of customer loyalty was not a product of customer service, as might be expected, but of the sales experience.