Sellers Not Meeting Buyer’s Expectations
A recent report, published by A Sales Growth Company, of over 1200 buyer across multiple industries and functional groups uncovered a rather sobering fact, sales people are not selling the way buyers want to be sold.
The survey published in October of 2024, surveyed buyers on how they wanted to be sold and what was most important to them when dealing with salespeople. The survey contained questions such as; “Have you ever purchased the wrong product or service because you didn’t understand the problem you were trying to solve?” “What stalls the sales process?” “Do you go dark and what causes you to go dark?” “What makes you more apt to buy?” “What do salespeople do that stalls the sales process?” and more.
The survey is treasure trove into the mind of the buyer and what they are looking for from salespeople.
Within that trove, a particular observation is clear. What salespeople are doing isn’t what buyers want and it’s undermining the sales process, for both buyers and sellers.
When buyers were asked, what is the most important material you want covered in a first meeting, ie discovery meeting, buyers top three responses were: product/service information, exploration of known current business problems and challenges and questions about future desired outcomes, goals and/or objectives.
However,
When asked what material was most often covered in the first meeting, the answers deviated from what buyers wanted substantially. Buyers said, in spite of what was most important, sellers covered product/service information, seller company info, presentation of general industry issues and solutions. Salespeople were spending two thirds of their efforts covering topics buyers didn’t value very much.
The graph above cleanly illustrates the divide. Sellers are heavily focused on product info (which buyers appreciate), general industry info, and selling company info (which they don’t appreciate), whereas buyers want product/info AND to explore known business problems and questions around future goals. The disconnect is stark.
The downstream effects of these findings are reflected in the research.
- 48% of buyers bought the wrong product because they didn’t understand the problem
- 47% of buyers bought the wrong product because the salesperson didn’t understand the problem they were trying to solve
- 32% of buyers rescope the problem at least 3-5 times AFTER the sales process has begun
- 56% of buyers have gone dark and 71% never reconnect after going dark
Although, not proven out in the research it can be inferred that the inability of salespeople to meet the buying needs of buyers is having an effect on industry selling trends as a whole. In 2023, sales stats across the board were down. Sales organizations have not been effectively delivering.
- 91% of sales people missed quota*
- Win rates are down 17-25%**
- Sales cycles have increased by 25%†
- Average Contract Value has decreased by 18%††
A Switch to Focusing on Buyers Problems
In order to respond to buyers expectations, sales organizations will need to invest more in business acumen, customer business assessment and customer problem awareness training and development. The over indexing on product training is driving reps to lead with features and benefits and little understanding of the true value of their products and why they should be implemented in their buyer’s environments.
Sales enablement teams that commit to identifying, documenting, and training sales teams on critical customer data will win. This data includes; customer KPIs, the customer or buyers frameworks and processes that you affect or influence, their go to market strategies, the problems they have that you fix, the root causes to those problems, and the impacts, should those problem exist. The data should include who their competition is? It should include how the current systems they use are creating the problem, or not effective. It should include their value proposition to their customers and more.
The ability of sales organizations to provide their salespeople with as much understanding of who they are selling to and the circumstances the lead them to change or pick a different vendor is critical in todays selling environments.
Also, to cement the team in meeting the buyers where they are, organizations should leverage feedback loops like Gong, and Noted Analytics. Tools like this provide the observational feedback to ensure the team is engaging with buyers in the way buyers want to be engaged.
Buyers are Fed Up With Salespeople
Salespeople have always had some level of a bad rap and unfortunately things are no different today. Buyers are fed up with the horrible and intrusive emails and cold calls. They’re fed up with the poor discovery and feature dumps. They’re fed up with canned, lack of customized demos. They are just done and depending on who you ask, they are looking for more and more ways to avoid us. It shouldn’t be this way and neither the prospect, nor the seller win in this scenario.
The good news is, we know why they are fed up with us and we can change it.
Not everyone will, and that is where the win is. The organizations that understand how the customer wants to be sold and can meet them where they are, will reap the benefits.
Will it be you?
To read the full report and learn more down load here:
