Both account selling and prospecting are important components of the sales process. However, they are often misunderstood. This blog will explain what each of these is and how to determine if an opportunity is better suited for either. It will also show you how to use them in your business. Professional Business Owners This is a great opportunity to learn about account selling and transactional selling.
There are two main approaches to selling. The consultative sales approach focuses on building trust with prospects and understanding their needs before finding the best solution for them.
It is becoming more common to recognize that account selling is a better sales process than transactional selling.
Account selling focuses on understanding the organization and not just one individual. It also works to identify multiple decision-makers within a single account. It is possible to target specific accounts by using targeted messages, content, and engagement strategies.
Transactional selling refers to when a salesperson determines the customer’s needs through conversations with potential customers and then uses that information to guide them toward making a purchase. This approach is more focused on the development of small transactions at the moment than on long-term, longer-term relationships between companies.
It is different from transitional selling because consultative selling involves more open communication than asking questions about past purchases, current problems, or needs.
What is Account-Based Selling?
Salespeople have learned for years to treat each opportunity as if it were their own and to tailor their selling processes accordingly (i.e. account-based selling). However, the ideal customer profile was always there; all you had to do was find it.
This is a way to create a comprehensive list of client criteria (such as industry and revenue size) that can be used to help you target them more effectively in your outreach efforts.
It is also important to be able to identify who in an organization is most likely to buy from you so that outreach is not a guesswork.
Account selling, as mentioned above is a targeted approach to marketing and sales that focuses only on certain accounts.
This approach to clients has many benefits. It can help you generate more sales, build deeper relationships with customers and increase buyer perceptions of your business. You can also track ROI. As we go forward, we will also discuss transactional selling.
Account Selling Framework
This is the ABM framework:
1. Internal Alignment
2 Create an Ideal Customer Profil
3. Create Specific Buyer Personas
4. Create Your Account Targeting Strategy
5 Create a Targeted Outreach Strategie
6 Campaign Analysis & Testing
We now know how important it is to create a customer profile that’s ideal and account-based sales. Let’s go through each step so we can get a better understanding of account selling.
1. Internal Alignment – This is the first stage of aligning your sales team. It will help everyone see exactly what type of buyer you are after. This will give you the perfect opportunity to reach a consensus on what you want to achieve and who your target accounts should be (should not be a secret).
I love to begin by looking at our employee rosters and segmenting them based on job roles or departments. Then, I also look at the client lists to see who we have worked with in the past.
This will create a complete list of both these types of people. Some may have been involved with previous sales, while others may not have but could be significant contributors to the effort.
2. It’s easier to create an ideal customer profile – Asking for input from stakeholders is a sure way to get consensus about what you want. There are many ways to create the ideal customer profile. And you can always add detail over time.
No matter how you do it these accounts are most likely to purchase from you. We want to make sure they are detailed to the smallest detail so that you can see exactly what you want.
This will enable you to create buyer personas. These are the people involved in the decision-making process.
Ideally, this list should include more than just names and titles but also include relevant information such as geographic location/distribution by territory or region, size of the company in terms of revenue or the number of employees, main decision-makers vs. influencers, role in the purchase process (i.e., early adopters vs. late majority), etc.
Anything that helps you understand their role in your overall sales strategy, outreach efforts to get them involved with your content, and whether or not they are a good fit.
3. We can create buyer personas once we have our ideal customer profile. Once we have this information, we can begin to create buyer personas. This involves breaking down the target account into its components and adding any details that can help us narrow down who will make the purchase decision. For example, we will focus on the industry (or market), revenue or the number of employees, and organizational structure (i.e. horizontal vs vertical).
4. You are now ready to develop your account targeting strategy.
This involves identifying the accounts you wish to engage with, their reasons, and how you will do so, whether through nurturing programs or social selling.
This is a way to make potential customers aware of who you are, and what your service or product offers, and establish yourself as an industry thought leader.
5. Create a targeted outreach strategy – Targeted outreach strategies are about identifying the online platforms where buyers will spend their time (e.g. social media) and then developing a plan to reach them there. You must also understand where your potential buyers are most likely to be receiving information on topics relevant to your offer.
If you sell cloud-based enterprise resource management (ERP) software to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), these people won’t be directly contacting vendors.
It will be through their financial advisors or accountants that they’ll find out about it. We can ensure that our content is accessible when customers need it the most by researching where they might come across these people.
6. Create a targeted outreach strategy – Now that we have identified our ideal customers, it is time to create a plan for how they will find out more about our offerings. Now it’s time to create a targeted outreach strategy that will allow us to better connect with them when they need our products or services. T
This is where the fun begins. You can create a variety of strategies depending on your business, customers, and the type of sales activities that you are interested in (e.g., nurture programs vs. selling on social media). This is the best way to account sell.
This is where the main goal lies. You want prospects to be able to contact you with information that will help them learn about your products and services and see value in what your content offers, regardless of whether there is an immediate need.
7. Campaign analysis and testing – The final step of this process is to analyze the campaign. You can see the overall results of each activity and how they impacted different buyers in your target accounts.
This will help you identify what worked for you, what didn’t, and where you have the potential to expand on an idea or go in a different direction. This will help you to understand how to reach potential customers via social selling and nurturing programs.
We have now learned a lot about account-based sales and the important framework. Let’s now discuss transactional selling. Why is it so important?
What is Transactional Selling?
Transactional Selling refers to when you are not trying to establish a relationship with your customer but trying to sell them something. This could include cold calling, marketing online, or door-to-door sales.
This is because there is no relationship between you and your buyer. Your communication should be focused on creating an interpersonal connection before you close the sale. It is important to work quickly and complete all steps as quickly as you can before you move on to the next step.
Transactional vs. Transitional selling vs. Transactional
These selling situations, where there is an existing relationship between seller and customer, are where the emphasis is on building a trusting relationship.
This can be done by sharing experiences, finding common interests, and asking questions related to individual customers’ needs.
These interactions are casual and less focused on closing deals. These relationships can be established with existing customers or prospects who have never purchased your product/service.
Transactional vs. Consulting Selling
Consultative selling is when you build a relationship with your customer by trying to help them by offering solutions or services that will address their needs. To be able to sell products that address the needs of your customers, you must first be open with them.
How do you create value in transactional-based selling?
This type of situation requires that you approach the sale from a place where you are asking for advice and not trying to give it. It is not your goal to give an answer, but to get the client thinking about ways you can improve their business. This is done by solving a part of the client’s problem using your product/service as a solution.
Here are some key steps to creating value in transactional-based sales:
- Describe the benefits that customers can enjoy
- As soon as possible, establish common interests.
- Prioritize your relationships.
- Listen actively.
- Show passion and trust in your product.
- Connect with your customers.
- Be patient
Let’s take a look at each point in more detail.
1. Explain to the customer what they can gain
First, get them to be interested in your product. !
The street light method is one way to achieve this. It involves asking them open-ended questions that get them talking about their problems. They will be more interested in learning about your product/service if you start to act like a salesperson, telling them how great it is and why they are so useful.
After they have told you their biggest problem with [xyz], find out if it can be solved and then explain the benefits that they will get by using your product. This strategy will help you sell your products and make it easier for customers when the time comes to buy.
2. As soon as possible, establish common interests
Once you have gained their attention, you can begin to find common ground so that they feel more at ease around you. Asking questions related to their current situation is the best way to achieve this.
If the person you are talking to is a small business owner, ask them how many employees they have. This will help you frame your product’s advantages about the company. Tell them about your children or other similar stories if it is a family-owned company. This will help you to have a conversation and build connections.
Try to meet people where they are – regardless of who you are, there is a part of your life that overlaps with them.
This is easiest to do by using words such as “we”, “our”, and “us” when you talk about yourself or your company ( e.g.we know what it’s like being in your shoes).
This works well for describing customer problems ( e.g. we understand how important [insert pertinent topic here] to our customers]. This creates a feeling of familiarity for your customer and allows them to know that you are a normal person like them.
3. Prioritize your relationships
When you feel comfortable with each other, prioritize your relationship. You should approach each interaction as if this is the last time you will see them. You should aim to provide value to them to make them want to buy again.
Customers want to work with people they trust. Prioritize customers who are loyal to you over others who haven’t. This is particularly important if you have customers from multiple companies.
It is important to keep your eyes on the people around you. This could cause you problems down the road if they require something from you.
4. Listen actively
Salespeople often overlook the importance of listening. It can make the difference between feeling confident that you have pitched the right product/service or feeling like you did most of the talking.
You should be prepared to listen and not get distracted by any distractions. People will often tell you things that might interest you (and help you sell your product).
This means that you must be involved in conversations and listen carefully to clues about your clients’ motivations, such as money or status. This information will help you to move forward and prevent you from wasting your time trying to sell clients products or services they don’t need.
5. Show passion and trust in your product/service
Show passion for your product/service by listening to clients. It’s contagious when you believe in something. This is especially important when presenting to clients. Clients will be more inclined to listen and not get distracted by the world around them if they see how passionate you are about your work.
This applies to clients as well. It is important to show them how trustworthy your company values are by being honest and truthful about everything related to your business, from pricing information to history. They won’t believe you if they don’t trust your company. This means they won’t be able to buy the product/service.
People are more likely to be interested in a product or service if they believe it is something that you believe in. Customers will feel that they are getting a benefit and confidence in your company.
6. Connect with your customers
Remember everything you discussed during the initial meeting when a client returns to you for business. They should feel that their experience with you was better than the one before. You can achieve this by recollecting key information from previous meetings and conversations.
This shows that you care about the customer’s opinions and listened to them. Because they have built a trusting relationship over time, this keeps things casual and everyone feels comfortable doing business together.
7. Have patience
Be patient when dealing with potential customers and clients. You know they have lots going on right now, so, understandably, they might be having difficulties or being indecisive. However, just because they aren’t interested in buying your product doesn’t mean they won’t want to do business with you in the future.
Businesses go through bad and good times. You can help your business achieve new heights by working hard, no matter what. Once the client has had enough time to reflect on the issue and understand its value, they will be able to take the necessary steps to make it happen.
In Conclusion
These selling techniques require you to be patient and accept that not everyone in your customer’s company is familiar with your product/service. You can’t expect them immediately to grasp all the benefits. They don’t have to be exposed to it every day so give them time to process everything.
