Buyers are not confident enough

There is any number of sales processes and new sales strategies available to B2B salespeople. Back in the day everyone was interested in Miller Heiman or Sandler or SPIN (many still are). Then Challenger became the big thing. Today’s flavour is MEDDPICC (or SPICED or SUGAR or…). Yes, I appreciate they are not all equal – some are qualification systems rather than sales approaches, but there is a huge overlap.

Over the last few months, I have seen a lot of content in a couple of areas.

<a href="<a href="https://www.jolteffect.com/">https://www.jolteffect.com/</a>">* JOLT, a book</a> from the guys who brought you the Challenger Sale.

Sensemaking and JOLT are not the same, but they do point to a similar issue. Customers have real difficulties making decisions, and very often will default to do-nothing/stick with the status quo. Every experienced B2B seller knows this, and it becomes more and more prevalent the larger the deal, and therefore the more significant the decision. It’s pretty easy to understand why: spending a lot of money and committing a lot of company resource, makes champions of any decision highly visible. If it’s successful, they may look great. But on the other hand, it could be career limiting, or terminating, if things don’t go well.

How do we overcome this? Sensemaking and JOLT both focus on helping the customer become more confident. Ensuring they are asking the right questions – not just the questions which lead to your solution, but genuinely the right questions for their business. Rather than bamboozle them with more-and-more information, or try to raise a level of FOMO by emphasising the costs of the status quo, we need them to gain trust – not in the seller or the seller’s product, but in themselves. Trust in their own ability to make a good decision. Trust that they have evaluated sufficiently and that they will get what they are looking for, and get what you are promising.

In some ways, nothing has changed: every good B2B salesperson looks to find a real pain the prospect has, and if that pain exists and if the seller’s product solves it, there is a conversation worth having. If not, a good seller walks away.

On the other hand, things have changed a lot: buyers have an immense amount information in front of them and too much information is as bad as too little. What information do they believe? A lot of it will be contradictory. Who do they believe?

Our job as sellers is to be genuine in the information we deliver – don’t hide things, don’t exaggerate. Give your prospects reasons to trust you, give them third-party information that is appropriate and guides in the right direction. Again, ‘right’ does not mean your product, it means right for them. And if that is wrong for you, then they are not well qualified, move on.