Using insight selling effectively

An interesting article from the Harvard Business Review on the best way to use insight selling – Why tell them something they don't know, is bad advice for b2b sales - I would recommend reading the whole article at: https://hbr.org/2019/08/why-tell-them-something-they-dont-know-is-bad-advice-for-b2b-sales

The article starts by acknowledging that everyone is using some kind of insight selling these days - moving on from asking prospects “what is keeping them up at night” and actually telling them. The article digs a little deeper on how best to use this approach. It focuses on two aspects:

1. Who are the prospects

2. Sales stage

Who the prospects are is important because though the temptation is to share insights and ask lots of questions to qualify, and offer specific insights and related solution if your prospects are senior decision makers their preference is obviously for less questions and more insights. Gong-ai did a study on this and found that senior decision makers generally prefer less than 4 questions while operational decision makers have a tolerance for up to 10 questions. Also the nature of the insights change according to prospects too. Mid management buyers are more likely interested in operational issues, effectiveness , ROI and cost savings. While c-level prospects would be more interested in strategic, industry trends related insights.

The stage of the sales cycle becomes an issue as one of the main issues at an early stage can be inertia on the part of the buyer, not competition. The fact that they may be happy with their current situation or unconvinced that there is a need for change. Therefore industry trends, examples of what other customers are doing is the kind of insight that will get prospects thinking of making a change. If the insights can be tied to some kind of business outcome this will make it all the more effective

They also made the point that later in the sale cycle, risk is a big issue, particularly for big projects. Executives are aware that proving return on investment is not certain, the bigger issue for them is another form or risk – the risk of not being able to deliver on the project. They would be more interested in evidence that you can handle this kind of project, that you can organise resources on your side, and maybe other partners to make sure the program happens.

I have had a similar experience where the key challenges was demonstrating that we could get all the resources onside to deliver. We had a very good, high quality solution, and the client understood that, but there was an element of doubt that we could deliver in the time required. We did not get the project in the end because we were so confident we had a quality solution – we really should have spent more time demonstrating we could deliver it on time.

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