Sometimes, I sound like a broken record (Hmmm, I need to update that metaphor). Selling isn’t about pitching solutions. It’s about helping customers understand and solve their problem. It’s about helping the customer develop and maintain change urgency.
This shift drives higher levels of customer engagement, builds greater trust, and higher win rates. It reduces buying/sales cycles by 30-40%.
But when I talk about this, I often get pushback from sellers.
It usually boils down to this, “I can’t afford to take the time to help customers understand and define their problems. What if I do all that work, and the problem they focus on isn’t one that we solve? Or what if I do all that work and it turns out they don’t really have a problem?”
They go on, “Aren’t I better off waiting until they get to the point of evaluating solutions? Why should I waste my time on all that problem focused stuff?”
I understand the frustration. Let me address these, as best I can.
We waste time pursuing the wrong customers. We generate endless outreach emails to our “target customers,” but the target is very poorly defined.
I hear, “We sell to SaaS companies!” But that’s a very general description, there are thousands of them. Which ones? Developers, users, start-ups, enterprise giants?
Or, a seller told me, “We target the healthcare markets.” I then asked, “Is that doctors, nurses, practitioners? Is it hospitals, clinics, practices? Is it the suppliers of healthcare products, solutions? Is it the insurance companies? Is it…..”
Poorly defined ICPs cause us to waste time on prospects that will never be our customers.
Then not everyone in our ICP is experiencing the problem we solve. They may not be experiencing the problem? They may have already solved it. Or they may have bigger problems diverting their focus. And too often, they may be unaware of it, or they may be struggling and need help.
Are we searching for the signals or clues indicating they may be experiencing the problem? For example, declining growth/profitability, increased or unexpected competition, shifts in their markets and customers?
It usually only takes one or two conversations to validate the problem. But only if we are engaging in the right discussions.
We have to focus on the problems we solve. Deeply understanding who is most likely to have it. Looking for the clues that indicate they might have it. Engaging them first in talking and learning about the problem before ever talking about the solution.
Not everyone will be experiencing the problem we solve. But if we have the ability to engage the customer in deep conversations about the problem, we can quickly who we should be working with.
Product focused pitches interest only the small minority of customers who have reached this stage of their buying cycle. And we end up being on a shortlist of alternatives–each of which will solve their problems. And, as a result, our win rates plummet.
But too many sellers don’t seek to understand this. They waste their and the customer time talking about things that are irrelevant to the customer, or they are not yet ready to talk about solutions.
Our jobs as sellers is to help our customer identify and solve their problems.
We only focus on customers that are within our ICP, those that we know are likely to have the problems we solve.
We focus our initial conversations on figuring out whether that problem is a current issue for them. If it isn’t we don’t waste our and their time.
And when we do find these customers, we leverage our problem expertise to help them quickly understand, gain confidence, and identify and implement a program to solve that problem. And by doing this, reducing buying/selling cycle is 30-40%.
It turns out that problem focused selling is the real secret to productivity.
Problem focused selling is about focus–not spending more time. Our goal is not to talk to every one, or to wait for people having the problems to find us. Our goal is to reach out to the right people engaging them in the conversations they are most interested in–their problems/change initiatives.
Problem first orientation saves time. We quickly disqualify, focusing on the best opportunities. We engage them earlier, reducing the buying/selling cycle significantly.
Problem focused selling drives higher levels of trust and engagement, driving higher win rates and faster decision making.
We waste our time and our customers’ time by not being problem focused.
Afterword: Here is the AI generated discussion of this post. I’m embarrassed, this discussion is far better than the post. Be sure to listen to it, enjoy!
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