IT exec: Sell insights, not solutions

CEBU, Philippines - In order for sellers to adapt  to the challenges posed by changing customer profiles, an information technology supplier has called on players in the selling business to embrace the relatively new concept of "insight selling."

Executive Vice President Elvi Suficiencia of MDR Microware Sales, Inc. shared that the conventional "solutions selling" is not anymore producing expected results since modern customers already know how to solve their own problems through the use of new technologies.

"The hardest thing about business-to-business (B2B) selling today is that customers don't need you the way they used to," he said.

According to the 2012 Trends in B2B Buyer Behavior Report of Buyersphere, for example, majority of senior executive buyers resort to web searches, word of mouth and the online community in trying to find solutions to their problems.

Suficiencia said with companies increasingly being able to figure out answers to their own questions, something which used to be the work of solutions sales representatives in the recent decades, they can now readily define informed decisions "with the help of procurement teams and purchasing consultants armed with troves of data."

"I was able to converse with some retail and corporate sales people and most of them have noted that these customers have completed, on average, nearly 60 percent of a purchasing decision before even having a conversation with them," said Suficiencia.

Unlike solutions selling which targets organizations with already clear vision and established demands, insight selling evaluates prospects according to criteria different from those used by other reps, targeting agile organizations in a state of flux or change.

In addition, Suficiencia said insight sellers will seek out very different set of stakeholders who chase for their insights rather than someone who keeps their relationship confined only in the supplier level.

"These insight sales professionals don't just sell more effectively, they sell differently. This means boosting the performance of average salespeople is not a matter of improving how they currently sell; it involves altogether changing how they sell," he explained.

Suficiencia pointed out that those in the selling business must learn to engage to customers much earlier to give them the insight before customers fully understand their own needs.

As an example, he said restaurants could come up with an online or mobile ordering system where customers may place their orders without going through the hassles of queueing, stressing that most modern consumers detest having to wait even for a few moments.

However, when insight selling was introduced in the July 2012 issue of Harvard Review magazine, it posted a great deal of  challenge to the solution-based professionals, Suficiencia admitted,  largely because it created "confusion, heated arguments and dismal days to Generation X employees" since most top decision crafters in many sales organizations belong to the analog era.

"And it was crucial because people and technology today revolve in the digital world. Modern ways of business dynamics were introduced by Generation X employees into the analog hearts of the top decision makers. For most organizations to survive, they need people with 'uncommon sense,' people who possess tremendous loads  of insights," he said.

An IT solutions firm since 1988, MDR encouraged hundreds of its distributors in the Visayas and Mindanao to start off with this new trend in marketing during a company-initiated event dubbed Personal Computing Redefined held at the Cebu  City Marriott Hotel recently. (FREEMAN)