a New B2B Sales Approach to Win in Today’s Information Age

Providing prospects with high-quality information and “thought leadership” is no longer a differentiator for sales organizations — to succeed today, Sales leaders must help customers make sense of the massive amount of quality information they encounter as part of a purchase and proactively guide them through the buying journey

In today’s world, which is overloaded with information, customers are struggling mightily to make informed decisions about who and what to believe. Gartner identifies that customers perceive sellers adopting one of three unique approaches to engaging them with information

Giving: 

The giving approach follows the maxim that more is better. Giving follows from the belief that more information, especially at the customer’s request, will move a deal forward.

Telling: 

Telling is the preferred approach of individual experts on the sales force who rely on personal experience, knowledge and authority to address customers’ needs. 

Sense Making: “

Sense making” helps customers evaluate information so they are able to prioritize various sources of information, quantify trade-offs and reconcile conflicting information. Sense making simplifies customers’ learning by helping them evaluate and prioritize relevant information, all while helping customers arrive at their own understanding

Gartner research shows that 80% of the sellers who used the sense-making approach closed high-quality, low-regret deals.

I think you’re going to need a pretty good relationship already with the potential client to be able to get to be able to help with “Sense Making”

What are your thoughts? Are you a Giver, Teller or Sense Maker?