The Emotional Aspect of Strategic Sales
Part 3 of my strategic sales series - how to harness the power of emotions when selling
See here for Part 1 of my enterprise sales lessons series illustrating the lessons learnt from scaling a tech business to IPO and here for Part 2 on hiring your first strategic sales leader.
Its a truism that ultimately, when it comes to complex, solutions based sales, people buy from people. Most economic buyers are ultimately the same - while you have to create a coherent and rational argument for the value that your solution can provide, your understanding of the emotional drivers of your main economic buyers can often be the difference between a good deal, and a GREAT deal.
What ultimately matters when it comes to creating emotional resonance?
If you are interested in collaborating directly with me to help your company grow REVENUES please…
First and foremost, you have to work out what the personal incentives of each individual is. In my experience, the most common things that people tend to care about are:
Hitting their revenue or cost targets. Often, the main economic buyer is a direct P&L owner. Their success is predicated upon increasing the effectiveness and scope of their business. Figuring out their specific goals and targets, and orientating their solution effectively around that, therefore, is very important. The more specific you can be, the better the outcome is likely to be. For example, I’ve personally experienced situations where an economic buyer has been relying on a particular solution to get promoted at the end of the year!
Being able to “look good” in front of their superiors. Often, and especially in larger, more complex organizations, it is not enough to simply hit your revenue targets. Individuals need to demonstrate something else in order to be recognized. That can be innovation or a new approach to solving pertinent problems. Your solutions can fall into that category. Once again, this is predicated on figuring out the specific drivers that will elevate your economic buyer in the eyes of their organization. This can range from specific innovation goals as part of their personal scorecard to having economic buyers presenting at your events.
Creating FOMO (fear of missing out). Most economic buyers are very competitive. There’s a reason why they have scaled the greasy pole to their positions. They hate to give the upper hand to their competitors. If you can create a sense that dealing with you first (without necessarily resorting to a overarching, exclusive commercial agreement), that can be a strong reason to sign with you. Some tactics to achieve this that have worked for me:
Some products necessarily have capacity constraints. Make your prospect or client realise that. If they sign up, they can de facto exclude others from using the solution.
Set up a client advisory council where clients can provide their opinions on the development of the product set / solution. Make the number of slots limited. Create additional incentives for early members, or create tiering mechanisms.
Have time limited features that can be exclusively deployed for specific clients.
Co-create products with a particular client (for example, a co-branded solution).
Really delving deep into the areas of PAIN that your economic buyer has been going. Often, a strategic sale is about truly alleviating the professional pain that your economic buyer has been undergoing. While that can naturally be directly related to revenue and cost (see point 1), it can also be more than that. For example, the areas of pain that I have seen that can often lead to influencing a major buying decision (that are not directly related to P&L outcomes) are:
Painful compliance processes that are time consuming and onerous
Meaningful areas of risk that need to be continuously dealt with in the normal scope of running their businesses (e.g. critical talent acquisition, operational risks stemming from a lack of clarity on what is actually happening with their teams)
Cybersecurity risk
Managing reputational risk (especially online)
These 3 areas encapsulate some of the main areas that can practically make the difference in getting great outcomes for you and your business.
If you are interested in collaborating directly with me to help your company grow REVENUES please…