Value Selling Blog

Why does one sales team win a customer’s business, while another sales team finishes in second place? According to research announced in this blog post, New Sales Research: What Sales Winners Do Differently, three simple selling behaviors separate winning sales teams from their competition.

The findings of the study, published by RAIN Group, are based on an analysis of more than 700 B2B purchases from buyers representing $3.1 billion in annual purchases. Let’s look at the top three factors that buyers attributed to sales teams that won the buyer’s business:

1. Educated me with new ideas or perspectives,
2. Collaborated with me,
3. Persuaded me we would achieve results.

Now let’s look at these same factors and see how buyers ranked second place finishers in their ability to demonstrate these attributes:

1. Educated me with new ideas or perspectives – 42^nd place (dead last),
2. Collaborated with me – 26^th place,
3. Persuaded me we would achieve results – 41^st place.

Obviously the second place sales teams were not trying to lose the deals on purpose. I think the likely problem is their failure to adapt to changing buyer behavior. For the second place teams, unless they recognize what has changed (see the top three factors above), their only chance for success is if the winner is not in the deal and they are only competing against the third and fourth place vendors.

What I found encouraging was the behavior of sales winners. The three main verbs from their success factors (educate, collaborate, and persuade) are the building blocks of the approach that I advocate: value selling. The keys are for salespeople to help prospects:

1. Better see the magnitude of their problems,
2. More clearly imagine how things could be better,
3. Work with them to project measurable results, and
4. Deliver a business case to overcome internal objections.

There are different types of tools that can help salespeople accomplish each of these four points and communicate value at different stages of the sales cycle. Regardless which tool you use, the fundamental approach remains the same: educate, collaborate, persuade. By shifting their focus to what buyers really want, I believe that second-place finishers can become sales winners.

Do you use tools that help you educate, collaborate, and persuade buyers? Do you agree these are key selling behaviors to win with buyers today? Share your thoughts in the comments section.