I think since the first book on selling was ever written, we have internalized the discovery process. In this process, we focus on understanding the customer needs. We have endless lists, of questions to discover our customers needs. Most of these questions are biased to features and capabilities of our products.
These need questions tend to focus on the solution, naturally. Our discovery processes tend to focus on the capabilities of the solution, which is what we care about.
The problem with this solution focused discovery process, is we only engage the customer once they have gone through the majority of the process, they have determined the solution they need, now they are just choosing between alternatives. And, to make it worse, any of those alternatives will do the job. So how do we differentiate ourselves and win?
The toughest part of the change/buying process customers face is the work they have to do to figure out the best solution to their problem. This is where they struggle the most, largely because they have never done this before (or not recently). This is where they struggle to understand the change they need to make, define the problem, engage others impacted by the problem, gain support in solving the problem.
At this point they don’t express things in terms of needs. They express things in terms of problems, challenges, opportunities. They often struggle with expressing even these things, simply because they don’t know or don’t understand.
As they progress through this process, if they do, as they start to better define their problems, they start to express things in terms of needs. But their needs are expressed in ways that are very different than our need discovery questions. They express the need to change a process, to change a strategy, to shift directions, to eliminate certain wastes, to improve productivity, to simplify their business.
These needs aren’t expressed in terms of the capabilities of our offerings. They aren’t even expressed in terms of the solution they want to put in place.
And as they progress, again if they do–at least 60% fail at some point in this process, the start to define a solution. Perhaps it’s a new manufacturing line, a logistics management process, or a shift in their strategies/priorities, or a new product initiative, or any other kinds of initiatives. As they begin to define how they will address the issue and move forward, they will start defining the solutions, and start defining the capabilities they look for in a solution.
It’s only when, and if they reach this point, after wandering, starting/stopping, shifting directions, that we can start to ask questions about their needs for a solution. “We provide these capabilities, do you need those capabilities?”
But there’s a problem when they reach this point. They may be defining their solution, based on their knowledge of potential solutions. They may be saying, “We need a hammer…..” when what they are trying to achieve is hanging something on a wall. Because of their limited experience, as they move to defining a solution, they may be defining it in ways that are limiting.
And through this process, there’s something else happening. And it increases as they get closer to defining and selecting a solution. It’s the concern, “Are we/I doing the right thing? Is this the right thing for our company, for our function, for my job, for myself?” It’s these fears that stop the majority of change efforts.
And those fears are never expressed in terms of need. They are expressed in terms of fear, uncertainty, doubt. They are expressed at an organizational and individual level. And unless we address these head on, we and the customer are likely to fail.
Our current processes in discovery, and our need identification questions actually set us up to minimize our own success. We are dependent on our customers getting to the point where we are one of three alternatives they might consider as part of their solution.
There is so much opportunity to do things better. To create greater value with our customers. To help them succeed in recognizing/defining a change initiative. To help them successfully navigate their change/problem solving process.
And if we do this, we maximize our own ability to achieve our objectives. The data is clear, win rates skyrocket! No decision made reduces significantly! Buying/selling cycles reduce by 30-40%!
Our current focus in confirming their “need” for what we sell neither serves the customer nor us! It causes us to under perform our potential.
Afterword: Attached it the AI generated discussion of this post. I had an interesting reaction listening to it. There were some areas where I disagreed with them. They were taking a bit of a traditionalist sales approach in their discussion. But there were a couple of places where they came up with some intriguing new ideas. Enjoy!
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