Don’t let outdated strategies destroy your credibility; discover how to elevate your status in every B2B meeting.
Most sales professionals fail to use a strategy that will improve their ability to create value for their client and identify them as a high-status salesperson. The strategy we are exploring here is your perspective. This strategy belongs in the modern sales methodology we describe as being One-Up. One-Up is a concept that describes a salesperson with more experience and greater knowledge than their client—and than other salespeople. This advantage comes from the many meetings you have selling for a certain situation, while your client only buys on a rare occasion. You can study the One-Up approach in Elite Sales Strategies: A Guide to Being One-Up, Creating Value, and Becoming Truly Consultative. As a consultative seller, you share your perspective with your contacts and other stakeholders.
Emerging Industry Trends Insights
There is a long list of ways you can lower your status in a meeting with a contact and their stakeholders. One way to lower your status is by failing to research the client company and their industry before the meeting. Using a legacy approach nearly guarantees you a low sales status because few buyers and decision-makers are interested in a long conversation about “why us.” A lack of insights will seal your fate. A lack of high-gain questions will cause your contacts to recognize that you may not be the best salesperson to help them to make a rare, strategic decision, one that they must get right on their first attempt. Because you are here and reading this post, you are likely to be a high-sales-status sales rep.
Addressing Common B2B Challenges
If you want to score points with your contacts, you can distinguish yourself by sharing the trends and shifts that affect their business. By using your experience and your perspective, you create value for your client. You cannot improve your results without doing the work to research the company and their industry. Think about how clients are adapting, and how the risk of inaction can impact them.
High-Level Decision-Making Techniques
Because you have experience, you can educate your clients on potential challenges they are unaware of. Your perspective may include examples from other clients or stories about clients that succeeded because they anticipated the challenge. Your client may know about a problem, but you have seen many more issues that contribute to your perspective.
Maximizing ROI and Realizing Value
You need to know that we have left the Era of Solutions and are three decades into the 21st Century, the Era of Decision-making. I continue to explain that you are responsible for the perspective of enabling your clients to make the best decision for their company and their results. Few of your competitors know they are leading the client to the better results they need. Your perspective will have you prioritizing your clients’ criteria and their strategic goals.
Future-Proof B2B Strategies
Your perspective allows your client to understand traditional metrics. You provide this by taking account of both soft benefits and hard benefits that others fail to share. When your client asks you about the value of the money and their results, your view can help you win a deal.
Overcoming Misconceptions in B2B Buying
You and I live in the AC/DC environment (one of accelerating, constant, disruptive change). Your perspective can help your client be resilient to future disruptions. It can also show how other clients leverage forward-looking strategies. Most of your competitors lack this type of perspective.
Innovative Sales Methodology Insights
You may be cautious about how you go about correcting your clients’ misunderstanding, especially those that can cause them to fail. Your view can prevent poor decisions. Your perspective can dismantle their misconceptions if you provide evidence and insights that can improve their results in the future.
Enhancing Consultative Sales Impact
This consultative perspective will have you challenging what is traditional. Instead, you will provide a compelling case, success stories, and new ways to implement certain solutions. This perspective elevates your sales status and improves your win rates.
