THE CHALLENGE
Sales teams are typically blamed for “poor sales execution” when they are experiencing challenges such as small pipelines, deals that are “stuck,” or high loss rates. However, when you look deeper, it often turns out the problem is not execution-related. E.g., the sales team is NOT guilty of effort-related issues. Instead, we often find the cause to be poor sales messaging. For instance, sales reps are not engaging the right buyers with relevant and compelling value propositions. Ultimately, they are not prepared to differentiate their solution from the competition.
THE OPPORTUNITY
Sales messaging is not “nice to have”; it is the core of the sales team’s success. Yet many organizations focus on branding and corporate messaging but overlook the need to provide the sales team with the required messaging to engage appropriate buyers with the correct value proposition at each stage of the sales process. Sales messaging has a significant impact on three key areas:
1. Creating Opportunities: Delivering compelling value propositions to business leaders, especially at the C-level, can lead to new sales opportunities, accelerate existing ones, and overcome obstacles generated by lower-level buyers.
2. Winning Sales: Understanding the relative strengths and weaknesses of your own and your competitor’s offering is essential, but it is even more valuable to connect them to a specific competitive strategy. And implement the strategy by influencing decision criteria and setting traps for the competition.
3. Changing Behavior: One of the most overlooked aspects of deploying effective sales messaging is the impact on selling behavior. By preparing reps to have conversations with business buyers and differentiate the business impact of their solution, they can lead a completely different sales process. It becomes more fluid for reps to take a consultative approach, build a business case, and establish a strong negotiation. Solid sales messaging is invaluable. Therefore, even a modest investment in developing and deploying sales messaging will yield significant sales results.
ASSESSMENT
If you think ineffective sales messaging may be impacting sales performance, the good news is that it can be addressed relatively quickly. Please engage with us by commenting with your thoughts related to sales messaging.
