Mastering B2B Sales: Understanding and Solving Client Problems for Better Results

In the fast-paced world of B2B sales, knowing your client's problems better than they do is crucial for success.

Recognize Client Problems Early in Sales

If you are new to sales or you are in a new industry, you may be forgiven for not knowing your client’s problems. But if you have been selling for some significant time in B2B sales, you should know your clients’ problems far better than they do. When you first met with a contact in your dream client, you may have had to work to acquire the client’s problem. By the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth meetings, you should start to recognize the common problems your clients experience most of the time.

As the days, weeks, and months pass, you will start to be able to identify the root cause of their problems. Certainly, after years of selling in an industry, you should not only know the client’s problems better than they do, but you should also understand the issue’s root causes and the change your client likely needs to make to improve their results.

Establish Expertise and Authority in Sales

In our current B2B environment, your clients and mine are looking for a salesperson who is an expert and an authority in their industry. When clients struggle with uncertainty, they lack the confidence to make a decision. This makes it harder for them to ensure they can successfully make a change that will allow them to move their business and initiatives forward.

You may want to have your client confess and name their problem. If you have20 meetings, maybe one will surprise you with a novel challenge. Unless you sell a large number of products or services, almost all of the problems you encounter lead directly to your solutions. That is, unless your targeting is poor.

Example: Common Problems in Staffing

In staffing, my clients had a short list of problems: the inability to acquire certain skills or competencies, the need to flex up and down to deal with rising and falling demand, and the ability to hire from a pool of people who were trained and proven to be reliable.

In other cases, the client was unable to build their workforce due to some constraint that prevented candidates from taking the job: low pay, unattractive shifts, a bad reputation, or difficult work for a low pay rate.

The short version is that my clients needed reliable labor. This was the dominant problem. Because the same problems showed up every day, it was up to me to identify the root cause of the labor problems. I addressed the three primary causes as follows:

• Pay rate: Increase the pay rate. This was an easy solution.
• Unattractive shifts (e.g., 5 days of 8 hours a day): This was not an easy solution.
• Bad reputation: To keep 40 people working, you would need to hire 640 people a year. The candidates were offered the assignment before we told them the client’s name.

After some period of selling the same thing in the same industry and calling on companies with the same problems, you should be able to identify a problem, its root cause, and what the client will need to do to overcome it.

Compete Effectively with Experienced Salespeople

Two salespeople are competing for a client’s business. The first salesperson is professional. They ask a lot of questions and try their best to elicit the client’s problem. This salesperson may project that they don’t have the experience that the client believes they need. It is important that you recognize that your client needs an expert.

The second salesperson has the experience to take a guess at the client’s problem and its root causes. When a sales rep mentions some of the problems they expect, the client is likely to trust them because they prove they have greater knowledge about the problem than the client and, if done well, their competitors.

Improve Sales Results with Problem Identification

If you want to improve your sales results and find your clients preferring you over another salesperson, you might start by making a list of the common problems you help your clients solve every day. You may have fewer solutions than problems, as you sell the solutions to most of your clients.

What you may do next is to list out the root cause of each problem and what changes your client needs to pursue to improve their results. The more fluid the conversations, the easier it will be for you to prove you are the safest person to provide counsel, advice, and the solution they need.

For a number of years, I have explained how B2B sales works today. I have used the concept of being One-Up to describe the attributes that help reps project that they have the expertise to lead the client to the better results they need to reach their goals.

At the same time, some salespeople suggest that the legacy approach is still effective, even though there is more evidence that this is no longer true, and hasn’t been for more than a decade.

If you are a sales leader, you may want to explore this big idea with your team. You want your team to show up and surprise your clients with their sales methodology and their client-centric approach.

If you are a salesperson, you can work through the two exercises above. You never have to wait for B2B sales training to master your industry and the problems your clients have.

Do good work, and I’ll see you here tomorrow.