I read a post by a respected sales expert on “Information Asymmetry.” Oversimplifying it, the premise was sellers and customers struggle with buying because we have much more knowledge about our products than the customer, as a result, we have to reduce that asymmetry in how we educate our customers about our products.
This is probably correct, at least for the part of the customer change process that focuses solely on product/solution selection. Hopefully, this doesn’t mean endlessly doing feature dumps on customers, rather focusing on the product capabilities that are most relevant to what they are trying to do.
But, there are more important aspects of Information Asymmetry we fail to leverage to full impact. And it’s probably the most important part of the challenge the customer faces. It’s understanding the problem, the change management issues, and how to successfully navigate the change management process.
Our customers are disadvantaged with their lack of experience, understanding, knowledge about these problems. They rarely encounter them, perhaps only a few times in their careers. (If they encounter them frequently, there’s probably a deeper problem.) But everything we do, our business is built around the concept of being the best in the world at addressing a certain category of problems.
We have the deepest experience in understanding the problem, how the problem arises, the impact of the problem, the challenges of addressing or failing to address the problem. We understand the questions that needs to be asked, the data that needs to be collected, who it impacts, who needs to be involved in the process. We understand how people/organizations have succeeded in addressing the issue, and where it fails. We understand the concerns, fears, uncertainty individuals and organizations have in looking at the issues. We know how other similar organizations have managed these issues, where they’ve struggled. We know the process these organizations have gone through to understand the issues, commit to change, and the process they go through to commit to the change, gain support, successfully implement the change.
These go far beyond solution selection, and these are the biggest issues challenging the customer in moving forward. Until the customer understands these, internalizes them, can make sense of them, and has confidence they are doing the right things, they will be stuck–and fail to change or fail in their change.
As sellers we create great value in reducing this information asymmetry. We help them learn, understand, gain confidence–not just it the solution they choose, but in the way they are characterizing and addressing the issues being addressed.
There’s another aspect of Information Asymmetry, that stands in the way of helping our customers with these change issues. It’s knowledge of their business–not the business, but THEIR business. And this is, possibly the most challenging Asymmetry we and the customer have to overcome.
We reduce that information asymmetry, by increasing our business acumen. Through gaining a deeper understanding of customers’ businesses, what they do, their challenges, key drivers, key opportunities/threats, industry trends and issues; we reduce that information asymmetry.
But there is still a gap, while we may have very deep business understanding of a specific type of industry, category of enterprises, and specific personas/roles, there is a gap in understanding them.
And until we do this, until we demonstrate the curiosity, the caring, the interest about them and their success, we cannot as effectively bridge the gaps that prevent the customer and us from moving forward. Until we begin to understand specifically what the issues mean to them, how it impacts them, where their fears are, we can never demonstrate the empathy or trust to work with them in moving forward.
High impact selling is about reducing Information Asymmetry–but not just on products.
(Normally, this is where I would end a post, but hand in there.)
I know some of you are thinking, “Dave, you are such a broken record! That’s so much work, why not just continue to push our products…..?”
The reality is, extending our focus beyond Product Information Asymmetry, makes our jobs so much easier and makes us so much more productive. In this process, we dramatically increase trust, significantly improving win rates. In this process, we profoundly increase confidence, reducing no decision made. In this process, we create great clarity, reducing buying cycles by at least 30%.
Why wouldn’t we be driven to do this?
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