Sales Intelligence - What Problem are You Expected to Solve?

As a sales professional, your solution is only as valuable as the problem it solves. In a given opportunity, how well are you personally able to identify the business need that prompted them to shop for a new or replacement coverage plan?

Benefits
Addressing the cores needs and values of potential clients has a direct impact on sales success. It’s one thing for a client to face a choice between a group of competitors and quite another if one of the options is presented with an understanding of her core needs. This approach gives sales people a definite competitive advantage.

Marketing
Individually or in aggregate, do you understand what the prospect wants? Marketing organizations that do their homework on this point outperform those that don’t by presenting a solution that helps to define the need.

Sales
The sales organization tends to live squarely in the middle of understanding needs. Sales organizations that don’t practice this part of their craft flounder, failing to understand the need before attempting to provide a “square peg in round hole” solution. Understanding why similar companies decided to evaluate vendors helps sales professionals with context for future discussions.

Recommendations

Use post-decision interviews with recent opportunities that entered the pipeline to understand what your prospects want and what they are not receiving.

Using the same audience, find out why they include BCBS on their initial vendor list. What are the signals that BCBS send that create a general level of interest in the marketplace.

Be cautious of relying too heavily on sales professionals, agents or brokers for this information. Their attention is usually focused more on the middle and endgame than these initial sales stages.

If you can't consistently answer this question about all of your accounts, consider Win Loss Analysis from Primary Intelligence to create a consistent flow of information. Let me know if I can help. (cdalley@primary-intel.com, 801-838-9600 x5050)