now you've defined the steps of your
sales process but you aren't done yet
you need to spend some time thinking
about your sales methodology the piece
though that I think people miss is that
there's an overlay on top of the sales
process which is your sales methodology
and this is your secret sauce this is
what you are doing in each step maybe
it's uncovering pain maybe it's
identifying whether or not you've got
you've figured out budget there are many
systems there you know I won't list them
all because some of them are dietary but
understanding and training towards the
skill set necessary to adhere to a sales
process by utilizing a sales methodology
that's repeatable is key for scaling as
well integrate exactly so people know
what to do when there any specific stage
in the process there are a lot of
methodologies out there each one has its
own strengths and weaknesses and a lot
of them are so similar it's hard to tell
the difference your job as a Sales
Leader is to figure out which
methodology is going to work best when
it comes to executing your sales process
with your target persona because there
are so many methodologies out there the
fact is no single one methodology is
going to be perfectly suited to your
sales process and your persona that's
why mike Conkel suggests something
different
taking multiple sales methodologies that
you like and mixing them together in a
way that suits your business and your
team the best I've actually started to
migrate toward recommending something
that I've seen and I've been doing top
producer analysis and various companies
that I worked for in clients for about
the past 16 years there's an interesting
trend that I've seen with the the very
top producers is they don't tend to use
one methodology it comes right back to
this whole buyer focus thing right they
tend to react or respond to what that
where the buyer is so think about this
for a second you've got a buyer and when
you're talking to them they've already
thought through a lot of the problem and
they have very clear needs that they can
articulate with the language of needs
what we need to do is we've got to
accomplish it's important to us that
they start talking that way you can use
good old-fashioned needs-based selling
from the 70s ask a lot of questions
gather
the what and the why and the how and you
know a what you know what's important to
and why is it important to them you know
all the the priority of all of the needs
and you can show how your product
matches those needs
boom simple done right now imagine
they're not giving you that clarity but
they're almost complaining about things
and what they're really doing is they're
talking about the problems that they've
got well then you need to sort of shift
into more of a solution based selling
where you learn a lot about the problems
and you start to walk them through the
process of critical thinking and in
problem-solving and decision-making and
you're kind of co-creating a solution
with them then imagine that you you're
talking to a buyer and they've got very
clear objectives and projects and
initiatives on their plate some one is
they've either done the work to get to
that point if someone has given them
marching orders and they're talking
about the objectives they've got to meet
and then what they've got to do and then
what you have to do is sort of shift
into what do I need to do to help them
achieve and accomplish those objectives
we show that I'm the best person to to
help them do that and I call that
objective based selling right I think
tambour shantou may have coined that
term right so that you know that's that
and then let's say that you see an
opportunity for them but maybe they
haven't fully grasped it yet or they're
starting to see it but they don't quite
know how to capitalize on it and that's
when insight based selling works really
well all right and what I've seen over
these years I talked about was sort of
what's evolved from that from watching
these top producers is a recommendation
of using an adaptive sales methodology
adapt the way that you approach the the
the conversation with a buyer based on
where they're coming from rather than
what you're trying to do so do some
research and figure out what your team
needs in a methodology you might come up
with something completely new that's a
combination of a bunch of different
methodologies the most important thing
is to have a methodology that teaches
your team to execute your sales process
in such a way that all your customers
become raving fans in order for that to
happen you need consistency across team
members in the way they execute your
sales process so more
important then the methodology you
choose is the way you documented you
need to create a playbook that shows
your reps the best way to execute your
sales process a playbook in essence is
really accumulation of knowledge that
you provide the reps at specific stages
of the sales cycle as they need it to
move forward and guide them through the
sales process so what goes into a
playbook for areas that a playbook
really needs is starting with what to
know what does the sales rep actually
need to know what product are they
selling what serves are they selling
what sales methodology they're using
what personas are they actually focusing
on are very important secondly what do
they do what are the steps strategies
and tactics those sales reps are taking
to effectively engage the client before
during and after every sales
conversation is vitally important the
next stage would be what do they say
what is the core messaging what is the
storylines they want to tell the
customer what do the questions do they
have what are the conversation trouble
talk tracks are very important and for
what do they show I think this day and
age sales reps need to get more away
from pitch specs and focus on areas like
whiteboard sessions video compelling
visual content that can draw emotion
from the actual bought potential buyer
itself so what they're showing should be
more interactive inform and things of
that nature so your PlayBook should
include your methodology and sales
process in it but it should be more than
that it should include the content that
you want your rep sharing with prospects
during the sales process so if you know
your buying process exit criteria think
about your most common four personas the
journey they go through what the exit
criteria are you can actually start to
develop a content marketing plan that
answers those questions about what those
buyers need to see hear feel understand
and believe in each stage if you cringed
at the phrase content marketing plan
you're not alone sales and marketing are
famous for not getting
along but don't worry it's possible to
create a content strategy that will make
your team's job easier instead of harder
most organizations that we work with
have some level of content marketing is
constantly putting together content we
see white papers we see case studies
you've got stuff on the website there's
great compendium stuff it's all sitting
in Google Docs maybe you got some PDFs
there are great tools for shooting out
content around the universe does that
stuff work for sales no because people
need a content framework what they have
in most cases is piles of content
they've got these case studies they've
got these product use cases they've got
white papers they've got blog posts
they've got infographics they've got all
kinds of content but in a world where
sales people need to deliver words with
their mouth there's a disconnect and so
one of the things that we like to talk
about is the framework of the pain
persona feature content matrix it's
basically a four column matrix that says
for each persona what's the pain that
they have relevant to us what feature do
we have that solves that pain for them
and then what content do we have that
talks about us solving that pain for
that persona with that feature now that
could just be a story we're talking to
somebody yesterday and he said you know
we don't have enough customer stories we
don't have enough case studies that's
something we need to work on and after a
little further discovery we realized
they don't have a closed loop between
customers success and sales
so whenever customers are talking about
how they're using the product to be
successful there's no way to get that
information back to the salespeople so
then they can use that in selling
conversations and so that's the trick
it's it's not hey let's go build some
big massive content library of work
words that will take an hour to read
it's let's figure out how to get home in
that three word phrase right when he's
speaking with a specific persona who has
a pain that we solve with a specific
feature to create a matrix like this
start with your personas for each
persona add rows for the common pain
points you help resolve for each pain
point add rows for the features of your
product that help with that pain point
and for each feature add rows for the
content pieces that explain that feature
this matrix can hold a lot more
than just content you can put specific
questions in there that you want your
reps to ask during sales calls you can
include phrases or sentences that will
help them explain particular features
you can include email templates call
scripts or anything else that will help
your reps speak to that person in that
situation do that for each persona that
content matrix combined with your sales
methodology will give you a robust
playbook that will help a sales person
handle practically any conversation with
any person so what does a finished
playbook look like a successful playbook
first number one I am a strong believer
in digital play books we've seen play
books that are PDF files are digital
informed but they're not interactive so
I would say success metrics for play
books they should be web-based they
should be on-demand
they should be interactive they should
have video
I think it's vitally important and they
should be evergreen meaning that you
keep updating that moment consistently
because a playbook is always changing
for the reps so that's key and if you
have a digital playbook and structured
through a good system it's easy to
update and scale so pull together a
playbook of everything your reps need to
know in order to do their job and put it
together into a digital playbook your
reps can reference in the moment and
then you'll be able to execute your
sales process in a whole new way
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