When coaching or recruiting B2B sales folks, I always try to establish whether or not they are in the habit of conducting a well-defined needs assessment for each qualified prospect they see. In most sales processes, this is an extremely important milestone because if your subsequent sales proposal doesn’t “talk to” the right need, the probability of a successful sales outcome is extremely low.
If you’ve qualified your prospect thoroughly, most likely you have determined that they do have a need – but not always. Sometimes a need may exist and be obvious but sometimes the need might be undetermined or non-existent, then you have to work that out by asking the right questions. This is the essence of a consultative selling approach.
Having the right needs assessment in place will pay dividends.
It’s strange, but no one would contemplate doing something complex without a “script”, imagine a pilot taking off by simply pitching up and putting the plane into gear!
So the needs analysis has to be formal and iteratively built by the team in their market and their product area – specific. However, in the explanation I feel there was not enough emphasis on two areas;
1). WHY they want to do this and WHEN they need to do it; compelling reasons
2). IF they have the capacity, i.e. money, skill & time; MANY sales processes come unstuck when reality hits and the job has to be done, buying is easy, implementation is difficult.
Maybe, the statistics say, that is why >60% of all deals “just go away”.