Decades ago, salespeople could get away with being an expert on their solution and engaging buyers with how that solution will solve broad pains. But in today’s world of sophisticated selling, buyers expect a more-customized, engaging approach.
Recent industry data supports this shift too. A report from Sales and Marketing Management found that 67% of sales reps are not on track to meet their quota, while 84% missed their quotas in 2023. And SaaS Metrics Benchmark Report found that salespeople are losing about 75% of qualified leads. Wow. None of that is acceptable in any scenario.
Successful revenue training and enablement demands a deeper approach in domain expertise. That is not domain awareness or knowledge — but actual, genuine expertise. In the rest of this article, I will share what revenue leaders must equip sales professionals with to elevate their domain expertise to a level today’s B2B buyers demand.
GIVE YOUR SALES TEAMS AN EXPERT-LEVEL TRAINING
An ideal client profile is paramount in today’s selling environment. But buyer insights need to go deeper for true domain expertise. Your selling team should think more about buyer insights as taking a regular dynamic pulse rather than reviewing a static report.
To engage buyers as experts and trusted advisors, support regular funnels of the following insights to your selling teams:
- Deep industry insights: Your salespeople should have an intimate understanding of the industry in which your buyers operate. They should understand the challenges and opportunities, and even better they should have more insights of what lies on the horizon to come. Buyers will take note of the salespeople who bring more to the table than they already know. In fact, buyers want their salespeople to deliver new insights and ideas.
- Timely market pulse: Once your sellers have an understanding of your buyer’s broad industry, they need to have a focused know-how to the market — think trends, leading practices and regulations. Market research should be commonplace among your team. By following the ebbs and flows in the markets, your salespeople will be better positioned to serve your buyers with relevant and timely advice and guidance that could prove invaluable to the buyers’ decision-making and business outcomes by keeping them one step ahead of the game — and your organization many steps ahead of the competition.
- The buyers’ unique experiences: It is one thing to understand broad buyer pains. It is another to be able to approach a buyer with an intimate level of insight into their day-to-day drudgeries and struggles. Through use cases and buyer stories, you can help your salespeople truly understand the harmful status quos your buyer puts up with and what that looks like in practice. With that deep knowledge, sellers can approach buyers in a way that helps them feel not just understood but actually seen. To take it a step further, help your salespeople adopt the buyer’s industry jargon and nuanced business language. Meet them where they are to be able to help take them to new and more-rewarding places. Empathy and language sync go a long way to connecting with your buyers emotionally and mentally.
ENABLE YOUR SALES TEAMS TO SHARE THEIR DOMAIN EXPERTISE WITH CUSTOMIZATION
Domain expertise can translate into a number of buyer engagements and approaches. In fact, with deeper domain expertise, your salespeople are better-empowered to customize the experience that serves a particular buyer best. The following are a few ways to enable buyers to best see those engagements through:
- Customized solutions: Buyers want the value they need, not the entire kitchen sink your solution may offer. With a greater level of buyer expertise, your salespeople will be able to offer custom solutions that serve those needs, while also keeping an eye out for opportunities for cross- or up-selling where there is opportunity to add more value.
- Higher value proposition: While your salespeople should be working from a consistent baseline value proposition, with their domain expertise, you should allow them the freedom to customize that value proposition to enhance the specificity and level of value for a particular buyer in your messaging.
- More-relatable use cases: Use cases not only provide your salespeople deep insights to a buyer’s specific situation — they can help a buyer better understand their pains and envision how they could adopt and succeed with your solution in their organization. Have a variety of use cases available, but more-so allow a level of customization that helps salespeople highlight what will be most relevant and compelling to a specific buyer.
KEEP YOUR TEAM GROUNDED IN SEEK TO SERVE, NOT TO SELL®
When you practice a high level of domain expertise, you are practicing a form of Seek to Serve, Not to Sell® — an approach focused on delivering maximum value along the “moments of truth” in your buyer’s journey. This approach stands out in today’s selling environment and positions your sales force as trusted experts that buyers will turn to over the long-run for guidance and support. That in turn translates to sustainable revenue performance.
Download The Complete Sales Organization Guide to Seek to Serve, Not to Sell to empower your team to win an unfair share of the market™.
Want to talk specifics about how to build a revenue training and enablement program that elevates domain expertise? Let’s get something on the calendar.