How to Improve Sales Conversations: Decision Enablement and Client-Centric Selling Strategies

Unlock the secret to closing more deals by focusing on decision-making over pitching your solution.

You have every reason to believe in the power of your solution to improve your client’s problem or seize an opportunity that can ensure success. The issue with believing that your solution should be the primary focus of the sales conversation is that it leads to a negative outcome:

1. You commoditize yourself and your solution, making you indistinguishable in any meaningful way.
2. The sooner you jump to your solution, the more it feels like you are pitching—before you’ve had the necessary conversations that allow your client to make an informed decision.
3. You are more likely to lose deals to a competitor who uses a more effective, client-centric approach—one that creates value during the sales conversation.

It’s important to recognize that the only vehicle for winning deals is the sales conversation itself. It must create more value than your competition can offer (see Eat Their Lunch: Winning Customers Away from Your Competition). You need to be concerned about your competitor’s top two or three sales reps, those with the charisma and sales skills to win deals, particularly in enterprise-level pursuits. The rest of their team is likely using a legacy approach. Hopefully, you’re one of those top two or three reps using a modern sales approach, but if you’re not, this will help you win more deals—including competitive opportunities.

Why Sales Conversations Are the Key to Winning Deals

We often talk about empathy in B2B sales, but most salespeople have never experienced the buying side of the conversation. Because of this, it’s important to recognize that your client is responsible for improving their results by making a rare decision—one they must get right the first time.

Your clients and mine are deeply concerned that they will make a strategic decision that goes wrong. That’s why trust is critical, along with your ability to perform discovery work that ensures the client believes you understand their problem even better than they do. This is also why we’re seeing more stakeholders brought into the sales conversation. Consensus is vital for two reasons: 1) The contacts want to ensure their team agrees with the decision to buy from you. 2) No one can be held solely responsible if 17 people agree on the decision. Notice that, at this point, we’ve mentioned very little about the solution.

How to Enable Clients to Make Better Decisions

No one will buy your solution without a proper sales conversation. The best strategy is to wait until you’ve done the work to educate your sales champion and the task force making the decision.

You and I are responsible for enabling the client’s decision-making. Our clients make these decisions only occasionally, but we are involved in them every day, so we recognize patterns that allow us to lead our clients to success. You and I need to help the client make a rare decision, much like guiding a ship through stormy seas to a safe harbor.

Steps to Guide Client Decision Making for Sales Success

Here are several key areas where you can actively support your client’s decision-making process to ensure the success of their change initiative:

• Providing a New Perspective: Your expertise offers an insightful, well-informed perspective that your client may lack. Often, clients are too close to their own problems or constrained by outdated beliefs. Your fresh perspective can prompt a much-needed paradigm shift, like turning a key to unlock a new way of thinking.
• Identifying Root Causes: As someone who regularly solves similar problems, can pinpoint why your client is struggling to achieve their desired outcomes. You understand their challenges better than they do, allowing you to address the core issues effectively.
• Involving the Right People: To help your client succeed, guide them in assembling the right team of stakeholders to contribute to the decision-making process. When you ensure that key voices are included, you improve the likelihood of consensus and a successful outcome.
• Clarifying Key Success Factors: Clients often overlook important factors or place too much emphasis on others, like price. By offering thoughtful advice, you help them make a well-rounded decision, ensuring they get it right the first time. This establishes you as a consultative salesperson.
• Outlining Necessary Changes: Consultative salespeople stand out by confidently telling their clients what needs to change to achieve better results. This can be challenging if the client resists change, but guiding them toward necessary adjustments is critical for success. Like a sculptor chiseling away excess stone, your advice reveals the true form of success.

Why Decision Enablement Outshines Solution Focus in Sales

Your greatest value lies in your ability to guide your client through their decision-making process, so this should be the focus of your conversations. While your solution is important, positioning yourself as a partner in their decision-making creates far more value upfront. By prioritizing their decision, you increase your chances of winning the business and building a long-term partnership.

As you reflect on this approach, consider how much you do to support your clients in making informed decisions that drive their success. If you lead a team, ensure they understand the difference between value-driven conversations and those that fall flat. If you need assistance with this, feel free to schedule a meeting here.

If you want help winning deals, go here for B2B sales training.