Why are some salespeople more effective than others?

Conventional wisdom dictates that sales success is dependent on personality and experience. And this is, of course, true. But salespeople that consistently close deals are not just charismatic, they have a well-proven rulebook they play by.

A sale can be broken down into some broad components. In this article we’ll take a look at the first step—intelligence gathering, which can be further broken down into the key information points you want to collect.

Problem statement
Timeline
Budget & decision making

Getting this step right is central to sales success, as it addresses some important foundational aspects, like:

Building a rapport & establishing trust.
Qualifying the lead
Getting an in-depth understanding of the client’s challenges and needs
Tailoring the solution & argumentation to the specific need of your buyer.
Creating urgency later on in the sales process during the closing.

While this may seem like a straightforward thing to accomplish, it’s not always the case.

How do you cut through the noise and get to the core of your buyer’s problem? How can you, in a first discovery call, establish a connection, find out their specific needs (in terms of problem, requirement towards the solution and urgency of solving that problem) and convey enough value that you get the prospect interested to move ahead in the buyer journey?

Building Structure View

A useful framework to structure your initial sales questions in the discovery part of the sale process is GCP— goals, challenges and plans.

Challenges: what are the challenges/problems they are facing? (financial; lack of know-how etc.)/e.g. Lack of sales/revenue
Goals: what are the concrete goals the buyer wants to achieve in overcoming these challenges? (e.g. concrete sales/revenue/Ebidta targets)
Plans: what are their plans to achieve these goals or overcome these challenges? (e.g. generate more leads through inbound/a nested content marketing)

Once you have this foundational information, the next line of questioning (TCI) is about two important things, a) making the buyer aware of the consequences of not acting on the challenges and b) collecting relevant information to generate urgency later on in the sale.

Timeline: Goals are typically set by a timeline (until when does the buyer need to achieve these goals?) /e.g. Achiev xyz of revenue by the end of the fiscal year
Consequences: What are the negative consequences of not achieving these goals? (e.g. lack of cash-flow, the buyer has to release some staff)
Implications (need-pay-off): What are the positive implications of achieving these goals? (e.g. financial capacity for further investments, growing the company etc.)

And finally, it is crucially important to understand the decision making process and relevant stakeholders in the decision-making unit (DMU).

Budget: How much is it worth for the buyer to achieve the goals? Is there a budget allocated/available?
Authority: How are decisions like this usually taken? (which people need to be involved in the buyer process?)

Man signing sales papers

The advantage of using this approach is that you’re able to understand your buyer’s specific pain point and how you can fit your solution into their overall roadmap. This arms you with the unique ability to communicate with your buyer in a way that resonates with them specifically, and establish yourself as a value-provider (not just a salesman) later on in the sales process.

The important thing to remember is that sales success can be highly contextual—there is usually no one-solution-fits-all. The better you are able to understand the unique context of your buyer’s problem, the better you will be able to address this problem and offer a deal that they want, and are able, to take.

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A great start, but the battle is far from over. How can you best leverage the information you have gathered at this stage?

In the next piece, we will cover another framework that helps you structure the information gathered at this stage and use it to your advantage.