Insight Selling

Discover the Great Divide

"What is the gap between what the customer believes today and what they need to believe to buy your product?"- Insight Selling, page 18

Information overload can lead to what Harris calls an inaccurate buying vision – the customer underestimates both the costs of their current behaviour on their success outcomes and the potential impact of future alternatives. Without a clear understanding of how your product can enhance their success rate, buyers will postpone purchasing solutions, choosing instead to live with what they perceive to be a small problem or they will buy based on price alone, possibly ending up with a sub-optimal solution.

He suggests savvy salespeople need to ‘open the value gap’ before closing it. Put another way, if the customer thinks they are only “ankle deep in problems”, the salesperson must help them see they are really “drowning in problems” before they will be receptive to hearing more about the value propositions associated with your product/service.

This is not meant to be done in a deceptive snake oil seller’s way. The advice merely underscores the importance of creating a noticeable contrast between where the customer is today without your product or service and where they could be if they purchased what you were selling. And the best way to do this, Harris suggests, is to tell an insightful story.

Sell like Picasso Painted

"Insight scenarios… provide a clear word picture of what the buyer’s circumstances are before ownership, and what they are after ownership."- Insight Selling, page 24

Insight scenarios are stories about other customers’ dilemmas told to help challenge the buyer’s current picture of their situation, without directly challenging them. When you share a story about the problems another customer faced and highlight how your product or service helped them solve that challenge and achieve success, you encourage the prospective buyer to imagine how the features and benefits of your product or service might resolve their problems too. Rather than telling customers how your product solves their pain points, which could lead to resistance and push-back from the client (no one likes to be told they aren’t performing well), stories about the problems other organizations faced and overcame help guide the buyer to their own conclusions about the untapped potential that might reside in their situations.

To be effective, your story must be as vivid and enthralling as a Picasso masterpiece. Which means the story must be short, memorable and contain facts that are ‘wrapped up in emotion’ because as Bill McDermott (CEO of SAP) noted, “…buyers are not inspired to act on reason alone.” Customers need to think and feel that the offering is right for them. As the old adage goes, “No one ever marched on Washington because of a pie chart!”

Harris provides a basic formula for creating an insight scenario that mirrors many story guidelines: answer why, provide context, introduce a complication and a villain, and create a turning point that leads to resolution. The main difference is that insight scenarios always end the same way: “So that’s Maxine’s story. What’s yours?”

It’s Not about You (or your product)

"Before customers can appreciate ‘Why You?’ they first have to answer ‘Why Change?’ and ‘Why Now?’"- Insight Selling, page 46

This quote really hit home for me. I am self-employed and thus constantly looking to interact with potential customers. I’ve read dozens of books on marketing, sales, branding – all of which emphasize the importance of being able to differentiate yourself from your competitors; the ‘Why you?’ question. The insight nestled in this quote, however, reminded me that while all three questions need to be answered in a sales conversation, the latter ones need to be asked and answered first. “Why change?” and “Why now?” are now key questions in my needs assessment thinking process and client conversations.