Transform Your Sales Approach- Aligning with Client Opportunities for Greater Success

Learn how shifting your sales focus to client opportunities can revolutionize your strategy and results.

If you believe it is challenging to create and win an opportunity, what follows here will make it much easier for you in the future. First, you will have to remove the belief that you are pursuing the opportunity you logged in your CRM and decide instead to pursue the client’s opportunity.

Let’s compare the two entries:

1. Your CRM opportunity: After your first meeting with XYZ Widgets, you return to your computer and type “XYZ Widgets $250,000.”
2. Your client’s opportunity: After your first meeting with XYZ Widgets, you return to your computer and type “XYZ Widgets 33% increase in production before June.”

The first opportunity is all about what you hope to win. The second is about what the client hopes to achieve by partnering with you. You should want to win the opportunities you create with your clients, but if you want to make selling easier, you need to trade your opportunity for that of your prospective client. Frequent readers may recognize this as the concept of extreme other orientation.

Effective Strategies for Securing Your First Client Meeting in Sales

Imagine you pick up the phone and call your dream client. Like most salespeople, you start your pitch by telling the contact that you are helping other companies in their industry achieve targeted business growth, and that you want a meeting to tell them how you can help them get the better results others are already experiencing. With this approach, you sound like a “needs something” salesperson. You are already pitching without offering any value for the client. This is why you hear “no” often.

By contrast, a “knows something” salesperson calls that same dream client, and instead of pitching their solution, they focus on customized industry insights, leaving out any mention of their competitors or better results. This salesperson introduces themselves and asks the contact for 25 minutes to share an executive briefing on the trends and forces that are creating the headwinds that are already harming some companies' results. This rep promises to leave the briefing so they can share it with their team, even if there are no next steps for the salesperson.

The first approach makes it clear, too clear indeed, that this salesperson needs something from the client. The second approach offers something the client needs, namely a salesperson who knows something.

Mastering the Art of the First Sales Meeting: Building Credibility and Value

The salesperson who is pursuing their own opportunity will want to demonstrate effective client relationship management to establish their credibility, a difficult thing to do if you are not already credible. Because the salesperson needs the deal, they start by talking about what their company does, who they work with, and the amazing results their solutions can bring. The outcome is quite the opposite of what this needy salesperson wanted. Credibility comes from inside you. It is seen and felt in a first meeting.

The “knows something” salesperson starts with the executive briefing they promised the contact. In the first few minutes of the meeting, the contact believes the salesperson is creating value and knows things about their business and their industry. They also recognize the need to change. This makes it easy for the contact to give the salesperson more time and commit to a second meeting.

Both salespeople want to win the client’s business, but the first salesperson’s approach makes it quite difficult for the client to choose to spend time with them. The second salesperson’s approach is designed to ensure the client feels the salesperson is helping them pursue the better results they need.

Optimizing Sales Strategies: How to Sell Solutions Effectively

The “needs something” salesperson believes deeply that their solution is the best in the world and no other solution can match it. Because this sales rep needs this deal, they spend a lot of time talking about the solution. Features. Benefits. More features. More benefits. Client results. More client results. When challenged by a stakeholder, the salesperson defends the solution, even when the client believes it isn’t exactly right.

The second salesperson says little about their solution, choosing instead to engage in a collaborative problem-solving discussion, inviting the stakeholders to suggest what might work and what they may need to collaborate on to produce the best results. This rep is less worried about the solution and more concerned about the changes they need to produce the outcomes the client is pursuing.

Client-Centric Sales Approach: Choosing the Right Side of the Table

It matters which side of the table you are sitting on. Even if you are sitting across from your client, metaphorically, you should be sitting on the client’s side of the table. In real life, if you can, sit on the same side of the table. When you are sitting on the same side of the table with your client, you are both looking at and working on their opportunity.

If you aren’t the person that is doing the most work to help the client pursue their opportunity, you will have a difficult time winning deals, especially enterprise-level or complex sales.

On this side of the table, you can lead your client through their buyer’s journey, ensuring that they acquire the insights and information they need to make the changes necessary for creating the result they need. When you sit on the same side of the table, your success and your client’s success follow the same path.

Adopting an Extreme Other Orientation for Enhanced Sales Success

Even though some salespeople will not believe it is possible, most of the time you can say nothing about your company at all. You need not mention your company, the big-name clients you serve, or your solution until later in the sales conversation. If you are a true professional, you will have a better approach for eliciting problems and pain points and their implications.

The more you focus on the client’s opportunity and guiding them to the outcomes they need, the easier it will be for you to create and win your opportunity. It is important to know you will not win your opportunity if your client doesn’t believe you are the person who has done the most to provide them with the confidence and the certainty they need to buy from you, you are unlikely to win your opportunity.