Leigh Simpson
Why No One Gives a Shit About You or Your Company
Bringing insights from his new book Gap Selling, Keenan, CEO of The Sales Guy talks at Inbound 2018 about why the only thing that drives sales is the creation of value.
What Is Gap Selling?
The myth is that people buy from people. However, if you don’t add value to your prospect, no matter how much they like you, you won’t get the business.
Every sale starts with a problem, not your solution.
Experience your company’s sales tactics as a buyer – would you buy your own product if you received emails that try so hard to close at the deal at the first contact.
To solve this, you need to become a problem-centric seller.
Step 1 – identify the problems that your product solves. Establish the impact and then understand the root cause.
Find out;
- What’s the problem?
- What impact does it have?
- What’s the cause?
The pain is not actually the problem, but the impact that the problem causes. This is what creates the motivation to engage with you and buy.
By understanding the problem, having empathy with the impact and and understanding the root cause you gain credibility and create trust.
Focus on the customer, not you.
Gap Selling
Sales is about delivering change. We don’t buy anything unless we want something to change. The gap between the current state and the new state that your solution delivers is ‘the Gap’. ‘the Gap’ is where your value lives.
As a salesperson, you are an influencer. Your job is to influence your prospects to buy from you.
The problem with most struggling sales people isn’t that they can’t sell, it’s that they struggle to diagnose and create credibility as a problem provider and value for their solution.
Understand the current state –
- Physical & Literal
- Problem
- Impact
- Root Cause
- Emotion
Then ask about the Future State, establish where they want to go.
Most people stat with the future state. By not discussing the current state, you’re missing creating the gap and creating value.
You know you’re winning when you understand the fact that your customers need to buy from you before they understand that. Getting that message across with maximum value is the challenge that salespeople need to overcome.
If you can create a ‘Gap’ between current state and future state that provides a value of £200,000, why wouldn’t that customer invest a minimum of £20,000 (10%) or more to provide that future state?
Typical objections and problems for sales are;
- Client goes dark
- Objections
- Lack of features
- No urgency
- Price
By creating the ‘Gap’ these will pretty much disappear. Helping your customer to understand their problem and the impact on them and their business makes you invaluable to their future success.
This is the essence of Gap Selling
The new book by Keenan, Gap Selling, is out soon.
About Insynth
As the only HubSpot certified agency to major on construction marketing, we bring together construction marketing strategy, digital strategy, website design, SEO, content marketing, email marketing, sales automation, marketing automation and HubSpot CRM implementation to produce successful campaigns and great results for our clients.