Are you tired of a low conversion rate despite putting in your best efforts to impress your audience?
It is indeed frustrating when you run amazing ads and get visits or messages, but they fail to convert into buyers. But have you considered that you may be just lacking a proper method?
Many businesses find themselves swinging in the dark because they are not following a proper method in their attempts to find, capture, and convert leads. They have no clear steps to understand and influence their leads, making all their marketing efforts futile! In fact, more than 40% of salespeople find the first stage of finding good leads very challenging.
If you’re facing similar issues, you need to implement a suitable sales methodology today! This is because your sales methodology is the backbone of your sales process. It turns your sales goals into actionable steps that you can measure and track easily. This, in turn, helps you to nurture your leads who convert into customers without spending loads of time and effort.
However, there are several types of sales methodologies. You must find the right one by understanding all your options and aligning them with your business and market. But this can be really tricky! And the wrong choice will create a flawed process, leaving your sales representatives in utter confusion.
Don’t worry, though! We have you covered with this comprehensive blog on the best sales methodologies to quickly grow your business. So, let’s begin without further ado.
Table of Contents
A sales methodology is a framework that guides your sales representatives to find prospects and convert them into buyers. It takes the sales goals and turns them into actionable steps for your sales reps to follow during every stage of the sales process. This helps sales reps guide prospects through the awareness, consideration, and decision stage seamlessly.
Now, various sales methodologies offer different approaches to the sales process. But every methodology includes the following fundamental steps-
The correct sales methodology forms a standardized and streamlined process for your entire sales team to follow. As a result, it ensures the greatest cost-effectiveness and conversions from the sales process.
Many different sales methodologies have stood the test of time. But not all will suit your business! Let’s see what your top options are-
SPIN is an acronym for the four factors a sales rep’s questions for prospects should focus on- the situation, the problem, the implication, and the need-payoff. Discussing these subjects help to find the buyer’s pain points, helping sellers build rapport with them and make accurate suggestions. Here are the key questions asked in the SPIN selling methodology-
This is a qualification framework developed by The Harris Consulting Group and Sales Hacker to replace the BANT(Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeframe) and A.N.U.M. (Authority, Need, Urgency, and Money) methodologies. It is ideal for enterprise sales and involves the following aspects-
Conceptual selling is based on the premise that customers don’t buy your offering at its face value. Instead, they buy the concept of the solution the offering represents. With this in mind, your sales reps should focus on understanding your prospects’ concept and decision-making process. Then, they must integrate this understanding into your sales approach, especially in the case of larger projects.
To simplify conceptual selling, your salespeople should ask questions that fall into the following categories-
This sales methodology divides the sales process into three stages- getting the information, giving the information, and getting commitment. And the sales reps must ensure that it creates a win-win situation for the client and the company.
Established by Jill Konrath in 2012, the SNAP methodology aims to speed up the sales process by making it easy for busy and distracted prospects to adopt the product or service. It addresses the client’s perspective to help them understand, appreciate, and buy the offering. Here are the steps involved in this process-
Unlike the traditional thinking that clients make one purchase decision, this methodology focuses on convincing the client at three decision points. These are- allowing access, moving away from the current status, and then changing resources.
In the book The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson asserted that every B2B salesperson fits into one of five personas: relationship builders, lone wolves, hard workers, reactive problem solvers, and challengers.
As per their study, the most successful are the challengers who follow the teach-tailor-take control process. They termed this sales model the “challenger sale.” Here are its key steps-
Sales traditionally revolve around the idea that sellers must pursue and convince potential buyers. But the Sandler methodology goes for an unorthodox approach and states that both parties should be equally invested.
In the Sandler system, sellers take the role of advisors and work with clients to understand their challenges and suggest solutions. You must emphasize relationship building, lead qualification, and deal closing in this approach. Moreover, you must not pursue a lead if your solution does not truly address the potential client’s concerns.
If you get it right, the Sandler system largely flips the sales process. Rather than the seller convincing the prospective customer to buy, the prospect starts convincing the seller to sell!
Solution selling drives the focus away from the standardized product and toward the benefits of a personalized solution from the prospect’s perspective. It assumes that consumers are educated and perform research to find the best solutions to their problems.
This technique originated in the late 1980s and has evolved to adapt to market changes and buyers’ maturity. It is now a highly personalized model where you must identify the customers’ unique situation and work with them to reach a mutually beneficial solution.
Inbound selling counts on the effectiveness of marketing methods to capture potential buyers. The prospects get impressed with the promotional efforts (like ads, emails, blogs, social posts, etc.) and themselves contact the company.
However, they often research products on their own before contacting the company. And their contact may be through diverse platforms such as social media, landing pages, product pages, website forms, emails, and phone calls. This initial contact turns them into leads.
Following this, your inbound sales reps must take the leads through the consideration and decision stages to convert them by taking four actions:
The inbound approach adds a personal touch and offers solutions that the prospect truly requires. And this maximizes conversions and customer satisfaction.
Target account selling focuses on targeting with the idea that picking the correct prospects is the most crucial aspect of a sales process. It prioritizes getting the highest quality of qualified leads to ensure that your engagement and persuasion efforts are lucrative.
This methodology involves creating comprehensive buyer personas and performing extensive research during lead qualification. It also depends significantly on sales automation to identify the ideal prospects who will be most receptive to your solution based on their key traits.
The essence of this methodology is the prioritization of the quality of leads over their quantity. As a result, it involves more effort at the start of the sales process to ensure higher close rates and sales at the end of the process. And it’s the sales that make it all worthwhile!
Force Management conceptualized this selling method. And the concept behind it is that you should customize your company’s top sales tool and activities based on existing solutions.
It focuses on understanding the products and the customer’s business in detail to offer the perfect solution. This methodology counts on the skills of your sales representatives and specifies that they must know-
Command of the Sale requires you to communicate and deliver the message that- you can provide personalized solutions to the customers’ problems that are much better than competitors’, thus allowing you to charge a premium for them.
Gap Selling is a methodology that highlights the gap between where a prospect’s business stands and where they want it to be. It then identifies the hurdles in the way to get the target and offers the offering as solutions to them.
In other words, your sales reps put the prospects first in this sales model. They develop a deep understanding of a potential customer’s business, issues, and goals. And then, they position your product or service as the best method to fill the gaps between the present situation and the goals.
Consultative selling is a popular B2B enterprise sales approach that takes solution selling to the next level. This technique leverages the salesperson’s experience, expertise, and knowledge to offer consultation to the prospect without direct promotion.
It engages prospects and builds your credibility by showing that you understand their business’s situation and have the competence to offer the best solutions. Then, it helps the prospect identify their own pains and make their own decision with your support.
Consultative selling is about finding the right solution for the customer while suggesting the marketed offering in the process where justified.
The value selling framework is a straightforward methodology where sales reps ask the right questions, communicate their product’s unique value, and formulate a mutually beneficial solution.
Moreover, it involves lead qualification and lead value assessment, enabling salespeople to engage only the right leads and close deals faster. Value based selling is a productive method to find the best leads and then match their needs with the offerings to encourage the purchase logically.
The M.E.D.D.I.C. sales methodology is a highly disciplined, tech-driven, data-based, and tightly controlled approach to the sales process. The sales team at Parametric Technology Corporation invented this sales model in the 1990s.
This methodology emphasizes maximizing productivity by determining if a lead is qualified enough using data-driven techniques. And you can filter out leads that are not very likely to convert at this early stage. M.E.D.D.I.C. stands for the steps in the process, which are-
This methodology aims to maintain high cost-effectiveness and conversions in the sales process by pursuing only the best leads through a strategic, data-based process.
As the name suggests, customer-centric selling is all about understanding and meeting the needs of your customer with their convenience in mind.
You adapt to the circumstances of each customer by fostering a two-way dialogue, adjusting to their timeline, and serving as a knowledgeable problem-solving partner. This approach involves all it takes to collaborate with the clients to find solutions instead of selling to them.
The correct methodology will help your sales team enjoy maximum productivity without confusion. However, making the wrong choice can confuse both your reps and customers. This can break down your entire sales process! So, how do you choose the right methodology?
You must clearly understand your product, customer, and market to make the right choice. Then, you must match these factors with the top sales methodologies based on the above discussion to find the best fit.
So, the key is understanding the product you are marketing and then conducting empirical research to define and characterize your target customer and market conditions. This understanding, coupled with the knowledge about top sales methods, will help you decide which methodology best suits your business.
The future will see rising competition amongst businesses to capture and convert leads quickly. And this will drive companies to streamline their sales process to shorten their sales cycle and boost conversions.
This is where the top sales methodologies will play an increasingly vital role by providing a cost-effective method to simplify and optimize the entire sales process. Moreover, sales software will evolve to incorporate diverse sales methods as companies move towards further automation. You can try using SalesBlink as it will handhold you in each stage of the sales cycle. Analytics will also play a growing role in ensuring the quality of leads and measuring the sales process results.
The combination of sales software, advanced analytics, and the human touch of sales reps will create the most powerful sales methodologies. And this will bring increasingly impressive results for businesses of all types and sizes.
So, sales methodologies offer a productive sales framework that is vital to the success of any sales process. As a result, the concept of sales methodology is here to stay and flourish!
We have covered the top 15 sales methodologies in this comprehensive blog. But not all methodologies will fit your business, offering, and market conditions. So, we also went through some tips to help you make a research-backed decision on the correct sales methodology for your company.
Moreover, we saw that sales methodologies are sure to take a lead role in the future. This is because they provide a simple and cost-effective method to simplify and optimize the sales process. And this indicates that investing in an efficient sales methodology will bring you lasting benefits.
So, you must now implement the correct sales methodology to raise the productivity and speed of your sales process without delay! This will ensure high R.O.I. and conversion rates, giving you a competitive advantage that powers your business’s growth.
All the best!
When you choose a sales methodology, consider the complexity & cost of your product or service along with how your clients like to purchase it. Your methodology should work well both for your reps & your prospects.
The challenger sales methodology prods sales reps to work like sales professionals called ‘challengers’. They educate prospects about the situation, customize the communication for them & take charge of the sale.
As per SPIN selling, reps build relationships with prospects by asking questions from 4 categories:
S- Situation
P- Problem
I – Implication
N- Need-payoff
The focus is on the challenges the prospect faces.
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