The Top 5 Sales Methodologies to Consider for Your Business
Even now, some businesses are still relying on the “blood, sweat, and tears” method of doing sales. This means just trying to rack up numbers in sales calls instead of approaching sales strategically. However, to meet your sales goals, you need more than a committed team - it’s imperative that you decide on a clear strategy and set of methods for making your goals a reality. Today, let’s explore the 5 of the most popular and widely-used sales methodologies.
Table of Contents
What is a sales methodology?
A sales methodology is a philosophy for selling, or a set of guiding principles for how your sales team should approach clients and close sales. What is now considered the first-ever sales methodology was the “Needs-Satisfaction” approach developed by Xerox back in the 1970s, a strategy in which the sales rep can identify both the expressed and tacit needs of the customer by asking a series of questions and then suggest a solution that perfectly matches those needs. Xerox’s method was so well-received that they ended up selling it to other companies under the name “Professional Selling Skills” (PSS), who then continued to expand upon it and create new sales theory branching off from this original method. For example, the academic Neil Rackham went on to devise “SPIN Selling” which specifies the questions you need to ask (as well as the order to ask them in) to get to the heart of the customer’s problem, while the thought leader Mike Bosworth published his idea of “Solution Selling,” which are both widely used throughout the business world today.
5 Common Sales Methodologies
In this section, we’re going to introduce 10 of the top, frequently-used sales methodologies. There are some overlaps between the methodologies, as they can be quite broad, so we’ll try to get into the nitty-gritty details and go over the specific differences to help you paint a clear picture of each sales model.
1. The Challenger Sales Model
In their book The Challenger Sale (2011), authors Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson argue that the traditional model of relationship-selling, in which you slowly and steadily build a personal relationship with each of your potential clients to get them to buy from you, is both outdated and ineffective. Instead, they urge that sales reps need to challenge buyers by taking control of the conversation, and challenge their current way of thinking by providing a new perspective. This builds a light tension in the conversation as you engage in a casual debate, and try to shed light on an issue or new point of view that the client may not have considered before.
The challenger model is especially effective in B2B sales, because it places importance in teaching the client how they can potentially solve their problems. It also takes into account that in the current Internet Age, in the complex sales of B2B business, the buyer typically completes 60% of the buying process just collecting information online before having any actual contact with the company. This is why when the sales rep makes his/her approach, they should come on a bit strong and persuasive, to highlight the customer’s misconceptions about the subject and explain how the situation actually is, to create a sense of urgency and gently move along the purchase.
Dixon and Adamson also surveyed thousands of sales reps to better understand their methods and psychology, and were able to break them down into five common profiles:
The Challenger: Assertive and enjoys debate, takes advantage of their deep understanding of the client’s business in order to guide the conversation and offer controversial viewpoints. According to a study of 6000 sales reps, over 40% of top-performing reps fall into the category.
The Hard Worker: Extra-driven type that will work overtime just to make more calls and get better results.
The Problem Solver: Reliable and detail-oriented type that focuses their attention on finishing implementing the solution before moving on to the next sale.
The Relationship Builder: The customer-service personality type that focuses more on building strong relationships with both customers and colleagues. Generous with their time, smoothly mediate any disagreements, and do not rush the sale.
The Lone Wolf: Confident in their abilities, and generally bring results but prefer to work solo and use their own methods to get the job done. This is the least common sales profile but the 2nd highest performing type in sales.
2. NEAT Selling
NEAT is a sales framework created by The Harris Consulting Group to replace the traditional BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline) and ANUM uthority, Need, Urgency, and Money).
NEAT stands for:
- Needs
- Economic Impact
- Access to Authority
- Timeline
NEAT was devised once marketers realized that customers do not follow an identical buying process, and you have to address the subtle differences in customer needs. For one, BANT just gives you a script of surface-level questions that can start sounding like an interrogation on their own. On the other hand, ANUM only cares about hunting down the key decision maker to close sales, which means you’ll miss the chance to talk to lower level employees and will not be able to gain a full understanding of the company’s issues. Meanwhile, NEAT places an emphasis on probing into the customer’s deeper needs through prioritizing active listening and understanding rather than just getting through a series of questions. With NEAT, you’ll still be asking questions in preset categories, but make sure to work them into a natural discussion, and try to comment and respond to each answer before moving on.
So how can you include the NEAT process in your sales qualification process? You’ll have to go through each letter-category in NEAT and ask insightful questions to access that information.
Needs (N): What are the main problems they’re facing? First, you need to understand their current issues and their root causes. Right away, you can get a sense of whether your solution can benefit them or not. Further, you can ask what they’ve tried so far to solve this problem, in comparison to the solution you can offer.
Economic Impact (E): How is this issue affecting them financially? In this next stage, you will highlight the economic impact of the pain point versus the financial opportunity of adopting your solution. For example, if they only receive at most 10 inquiries on their homepage a month, then if you have a website optimization service, you can share that with a past client, they were able to multiply their monthly inquiries from 20 to 80 in a matter of a couple months by improving pathways and optimizing content, and were able to majorly improve the site’s SERPs rankings and increase the flow of web traffic. In this way, you’re able to suggest that not only can you fix their problem, but you can add even more value to their site through SEO and other benefits.
Authority (A): Who is the key decision maker and how can you reach them? Remember that often the first person you make contact with in an organization does not have the authority to sign off on a new product. Check the role of the person you’re already talking to and form a plan for reaching a person with decision-making authority in the company.
Timeline (T): What is a realistic timeline for closing this sale? It’s best to establish a concrete “go-live” date, which will help move the sale forward. Of course, don’t rush them into adoption, but rather try to recognize all the factors in the adoption process and grasp a pragmatic timeline for when they can actually introduce your solution.
3. Inbound Sales
This next section is a bit different, as inbound sales is really a large philosophy to sales, rather than simply a tactic to follow when approaching leads. Let’s begin by explaining what inbound sales means. The inbound sales method is unique in that it’s based around the seller’s actions, but rather around the journey that the buyer goes through when they purchase and evaluate your product. Take a look at the typical buyer’s journey in B2B sales, as depicted below.
The top row of Phases illustrates the basic stages a company goes through when making a buying decision, from becoming aware of the problem to actually searching for a solution, and eventually choosing a vendor. With inbound sales, you’ll want to fully understand the whole buying process and each concrete action your customers have to make to reach a decision. In relation to that, you will approach your customers differently depending on where they are in the buyer’s journey. For example, if the lead is still “unaware of the issue,” then even if you try to make a sales pitch to them, they don’t feel they have any needs yet, so they simply won’t listen to you, and are likely to reject you immediately and this will damage your relationship.
Instead, to these cold leads whose needs haven’t actualized yet, take a content-marketing approach and send them useful blogs, ebooks, conduct seminars on topics that they are interested in, and focus on nurturing the lead and gradually building up their awareness. On the other hand, for leads that have been visiting your website frequently in the last couple months, made an inquiry, or downloaded resources off your website by their own volition, you can assume that they’re fairly hot leads since they are actively seeking more information on your business or services. In this case you can contact them directly, ask questions to assess their needs, and then try to set up a meeting if the timing is right.
Generally, to start up inbound sales, it’s helpful to use a marketing automation tool to track their actions and get notified when your leads are heating up and interacting with your website or content more. In addition, marketing automation comes with an email marketing feature, allowing you to send personalized and targeted emails to different audiences easily, so that you can create a system for nurturing your colder leads.
Check out this article if you want to learn more: What is Marketing Automation?
Another key to conducting inbound sales is to build an inside sales department. The role of inside sales is to qualify leads before passing them onto online/field sales who approach leads with the goal of setting up a meeting. Inside sales will make a call and ask a series of insightful questions to understand each customer’s pain points, and then if they have clear needs and are looking for a solution, then inside sales would pass this polished list over to the main sales team, so that they don’t have to waste their time calling leads that aren’t actually interested. By dividing the roles in this way, you can ensure a more efficient and smooth sales process.
Click here to download our ebook “The Inside Sales Guide” for free.
4. SPIN Selling
Neil Rackham constructed the SPIN selling methodology after years of in-depth research into what makes salespeople successful. We’ll summarize the method here, but I recommend checking out his original book “Spin Selling” (1988) if you want to actually incorporate it in your sales. Anyways, in his research, Rackham found that top salespeople are always thinking more about the customer’s buying process rather than their own sales process, and ask a series of questions to get a sense of how close they are to a purchase and to uncover their company’s current situation. However, rather than providing a template of suggested questions, Rackham just includes 4 categories to focus on (see below) so that the seller can be flexible and adjust the questions to each unique customer.
SPIN stands for:
- Situation
- Problem
- Implication
- Needs/Payoff
Situation (S): Situation questions are asked first to understand the client’s company and context, such as current processes related to your solution or tools they’re already using. However, these days, you can learn a lot just from doing research online, like by perusing their corporate website or the customer’s LinkedIn, before even making the call. You could also look at competitor’s websites to better understand the client’s positioning and the industry as a whole. Use this information to ask more informed questions and yield a deeper response from the prospect.
Problem (P): Next, the goal of the “problem” questions is to make the prospect aware of a problem that needs to be solved. These questions should be leading - you want the client to discover the issues for themselves rather than just telling them how it is. In order to be able to pitch your solution, they have to believe that there are actual needs in their company. For example, if you’re trying to sell a SFA (Sales Force Automation) tool, then you could ask “Do your sales team manage their lead info all on separate documents, like in excel?” or “How well are the marketing and sales teams working together?” or even “Do you have a clear way to analyze your sales results and improve your system?” Dance around the problem(s) and have them identify it for themselves.
Implication (I): Now that the problem itself is clear, you’ll want to discuss the implications of that problem. According to the 2016 Sales Perception Survey by Hubspot, 42% of salespeople view “establishing urgency” as one of their top challenges in selling, but by focusing on concrete repercussions of not addressing the problem, you can convey a sense of urgency in this first call. However, if the implications are obvious, then you can just list a couple and ask if they have ever dealt with them before.
Needs/Payoff (N): In this final step, try to gently lead the client to the conclusion that your solution is beneficial to them. Briefly introduce your product/service and highlight how it is uniquely helpful in their situation, and then ask “Would that be valuable in your team?” or “If you could [use your product’s functions], how would that help you achieve [client’s goal]? Letting the client decide whether this solution has value for their business is much more effective than simply declaring one-sidedly that this is something they need.
5. SNAP Selling
Jill Konrath developed the SNAP sales methodology and described it in-depth in her 2012 best-seller “SNAP Selling: Speed Up Sales and Win More Business with Today’s Frazzled Customers.” SNAP selling is made up of 4 basic principles:
Keep it Simple (S): With the abundance of information just a quick Google search away, customers are already overwhelmed with an endless number of solutions out there and tend to steer clear of anything that seems too complicated. Moreover, oftentimes you may be selling to a client who is in a managerial or executive position, and often has a packed schedule and a lot on their mind aside from the problem you’re currently addressing. For these reasons, be concise when introducing your service and be considerate with their time, but still try to convince them to hear you out. In addition, frame your solution as simple and practical, so they don’t reject you right away on the grounds that they don’t have the time or expertise to be able to adopt your new technology.
Be iNvaluable (N):The customer needs a good reason to choose your solution and to work with your company over the hundreds of other options out there. Highlight the areas you have expertise in, and build trust with the customer. Also, you need to clearly communicate your product’s points of differentiation, or what unique value your team could bring to their business.
Always Align (A): In order to stay relevant to your clients, you have to align your business objectives with their changing needs. Make sure you present your company and solutions as directly useful in helping them solve their unique problems, so that they have a good reason to choose you over your competitors.
Raise Priorities (P): Figure out all their challenges and their level of priority for solving each one. Conceptualize which is most urgent and which they feel should be dealt with later in a parallel list, and identify where your products/services could help in these problem areas. Don’t stop there though. You need to take action to raise their feeling of urgency regarding the current issues. This could be done by pointing out the negative effects of not solving it sooner, holding a limited-time-only campaign and giving them FOMO, or proactively setting a timeline for when they can and should adopt your solution.
Three Critical Decisions
In addition, Konrath claims that in the B2B buying process, there isn’t just one decision of “to buy or not to buy.”
- 1.Whether to give you access. The customer has to first decide if they even want to meet with you and hear you out. To get to this stage, you first have to understand their needs, offer a compelling value proposition, and make them interested in your product. When you make first contact over the phone, aim to achieve these three things before trying to set up a meeting.
- 2.Whether to commit to a change. Next, you have to convince the customer that it is crucial that they break away from the status quo. To change their mindset, you have to prove to them that doing business with your company will bring a significant positive impact. With concrete data and case studies, you can demonstrate exactly how your solutions can solve their problems, and the benefits they gain from them.
- 3.What resources to choose. Now that the customer is open to the possibilities and made aware of the urgency of the problem, you have to make them Certain about adopting a solution. Continue to guide them through the process and try to highlight your product’s points of differentiation to convince them that this is the most appropriate solution for their business.
To wrap up
While it may be difficult to fully rethink your sales methodology if you have been conducting sales one way for a long time, I still recommend you consider the different ways of approaching sales, and see if you can take bits and pieces from those that I’ve introduced today, and apply them to your current methods in order to start improving them gradually. For instance, if you want to move towards creating an inbound sales process, then you can start by creating a system to qualify leads before approaching. These little changes can help you build a more efficient and successful sales team, and contribute to your long-term business growth.
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