Sell better by sharing valuable insights and using coaching skills

Hello Sales Reset Community

What’s the very best way to engage with your customers?

It’s when you share insights they find genuinely valuable. Ideally, your insights will enable customers to unlock situations they’ve been wrestling to resolve.

Your engagement with customers will reach new heights when you help them think through the implications of the insights you’ve shared.

To do this effectively, you’ll need two key ingredients:

• Genuinely Valuable Insights: When we talk about insights, we mean valuable knowledge that reveals new perspectives, challenges or opportunities.

• Coaching Skills: This means the expertise to help customers define their needs more accurately and have the confidence to continue developing proposals and plans.

These key ingredients are useful at every stage of your customer relationship, from prospecting to long-term key account management.

Here’s how it works:

1. Insight: Share some valuable insight with your customer.

2. Coaching: Use your coaching skills to enable your customers to think through the implications of this insight.

3. Outcomes: Your coaching goal is to enable your customers to clarify the outcomes they might seek from your shared insight.

4. Actions: This conversation will ideally lead to clear next actions. Which might include reviewing how your products and services might help! 😀

Here’s an example from my world of selling sales training programmes to salespeople and their sales team leaders:

1. Insight: “Everybody acknowledges the value of continuing sales training, but many salespeople are unaware of their need for sustained and deliberate practice to establish expertise.”

2. Coaching: “What is your plan for continuing sales training and practice that will lead to growing expertise?”

3. Outcomes: “I will work with my sales team leader to develop and maintain my personal learning and earning plan.”

4. Actions: I will schedule a meeting in our calendars to discuss how we will use Weekly Sales Reset and Sales Reset Leaders newsletter recommendations.

What might examples of insight and coaching look like in your unique market sector if you sell this way with your customers?

Let’s look at the practicalities.

Genuinely Valuable Insights

Why should customers or prospects make any time available to speak with you?

They’re busy people. They’ve all got many other things they could do with their time rather than speak with you.

The answer is that they’ll make time for you if they can learn something new that they will find valuable.

You’ll need a reliable source of continuing valuable insights to share!

Where will you learn the genuinely valuable insights you need for this way of selling?

Sources of valuable insights:

1. Customers: Stories from your existing customers.

2. Industry News Sources: What news sources should you follow in your market?

3. Your Network: How much effort are you expending to develop and maintain the best personal network? This includes LinkedIn and professional associations, friendships, ex-colleagues, etc.

4. Trusted Publishers: Where do you get your news? Consider subscribing to highly professional publications with hard-earned reputations.

5. Social Media: Find and follow the people who invest significant effort in sharing valuable insights in your sector.

Finding The Time

Investing all the time required to become aware of these new insights is an increasingly necessary part of being a professional salesperson.

How can you build this into your routines and habits every day?

Coaching Skills For Sellers

If you’ve subscribed to Weekly Sales Reset for a while, you’ll know this is what makes our approach to selling so different.

We’re convinced that the best way to sell is by using coaching skills with customers.

What do we mean by “coaching”.

The starting point is that coaching is not the same as advising:

• Advising: Providing expert recommendations or guidance based on knowledge and experience to inform decision-making.

• Coaching: A collaborative process that empowers people to clarify goals, develop solutions, and be sufficiently confident to proceed with the next steps.

The most essential coaching skill is asking great questions. These coaching questions are typically open-ended.

We’ll look at this in more detail in your mid-week newsletter.

In the meantime, what are your plans to improve and maintain your stock of genuinely valuable insights?

Practical Next Actions

• This week, spend a couple of minutes before every conversation with customers preparing: “What are the most valuable insights I can share with this customer today?”

• Listen more attentively as your customers and prospects share aspects of their situation. What fresh and valuable insights can you learn?

• After you’ve shared insights, pause and ask open questions that allow your customer to explore the implications of this insight for their unique situation.

Have a great week!

Does your sales team leader or coach subscribe to our companion weekly newsletter, Sales Reset Leaders?