The articles mention how selling skills should be changed over a period of time.

1. Selling ArticlesHarvard Business review
• In a Downturn,
Provoke Your
Customers: March 2009
• Selling into Micro
markets: July–August
2012
• The End of Solution
Sales: July–August 2012

2. ARTICLES TO BE COVERED
 In a Downturn, Provoke your Customers
 Nidhi Ambavane – P20
 Amit Nabriya - P03
 Selling into Micro markets
 Hemant Telang – P10
 Abhishek Bang– P01
 The End of solution sales
 Komal Avhad– P15
 Ashish Areekattel – P07

3. In a Downturn, Provoke your
Customers

4. PROVOCATION BASED SELLING
• Product based selling – A solution selling
approach
• Helps customers see their competitive
challenge

5. LEARNING TO BE PROACTIVE
• Identify the problem
• Develop a provocative point of view
• Lodge the provocation with a decision maker
who can take the implied action

6. STEPS IN PROVOCATION BASED
SELLING
• Identify a critical issue
• Formulate your provocation
• Lodge your provocation

7. DEVELOPING A PROVOCATIVE POINT
OF VIEW
• Proving the Point
• Reaching the right ears

8. SUCCESS IN PROVOCATION BASED
SELLING
• Lodge your provocation
• Capture reaction to the provocation
• Discuss war stories
• Offer to conduct a short diagnostic story

11. Selling into Micro markets

12. Find New pockets of growth
• Create an opportunity
• Identify the market

13. Make it Easy for the Sales team
• Courage and Imagination
• Future opportunity

14. Align sales coverage with opportunity
• Determine how to invest resources to capture
anticipated demand
• Local sales manager should be trained on
– How to use data
– Spend time
– Size the territory

15. Create sales plays for each type of
opportunity
• Identify groups of micro markets or peer
groups
• Strategy called “Play” consist
– Offer
– Pricing
– Communications
– Materials
• Example: Cargo airlines

16. Support the sales force in executing
the plays
• Opportunity maps that reveal hot & cool
micro markets
• Training

17. Five Steps to Finding Pockets of
Growth
•
•
•
•
Define micro market size
Determine growth potential
Gauge market share
Identify the causes of differences in market
share
• Prioritize growth pockets

19. The End of solution sales

20. Corporate Executive Board Study
1. Surveyed 6,000 reps from 83 companies
a) How they prioritize opportunities
b) Target & engage stakeholders
c) Execute sales process
2. Examined complex purchasing scenarios
a) Understand the structure
b) Influences of formal & informal buying teams
3. 700 individual customer stakeholders in B2B
purchases to determine impact on
organizational buying decision.

21. High performing salespeople strategy
•
•
•
•
•
Targeting agile organizations
Different set of stakeholders
Coach on How to Buy
Identifying customers who are ready to act
Learn to engage well before customers fully
understand their own needs

22. Top performers strategies
1. Avoid the trap of “Established demand”
2. Target Mobilizers, Not Advocates
3. Coach customers on How to Buy

23. 1. Avoid the trap of “Established
demand”
• Priority to customers whose senior management
meets three criteria for making purchasing
decisions
– Need for change
– Clear vision of goals
– Well established processes
• Star performers emphasize on two non
traditional criteria
– Customer agility
– Emerging need

24. New Selling Guide for Reps

26. 2. Target Mobilizers, Not Advocates
• Conventional sales training reps are taught to find
an advocate, or coach, within the customer
organization to help them get the deal done.
• An ideal advocate
–
–
–
–
–
Is accessible & willing to meet when asked
Is good at influencing others
Speaks the truth
Is considered credible by colleagues
Delivers on commitments

27. Survey of customer stakeholders
• According to 135 attributes & perspectives
revealed seven distinct stakeholder profiles
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Go-Getters – Looking for good ideas
Teachers – Sharing insights
Skeptics – Measured implementation
Guides – Furnish information
Friends – Happily help
Climbers – Personal gain
Blockers – Oriented towards status quo

29. How to upend your customers’ ways
of thinking
• According to 6,000 salespeople In The Challenger Sale
(Portfolio/Penguin, 2011), all reps fall into one of five
profiles—
–
–
–
–
–
Relationship Builder
Reactive Problem Solver
Hard Worker
Lone Wolf
Challenger
• Star performers are far more likely to be Challengers than
any other type. They’ve got a provocative point of view.
• Customers value the challenger approach; biggest driver of
B2B customer loyalty is a suppliers ability to deliver new
insights.

30. 3. Coach Customers on How to Buy
• Automatic Data Processing (ADP), a global leader
in business outsourcing solutions around its
customers’ purchasing processes. It’s called
Buying Made Easy.
• Steps represent a set of buying activities
– Recognize need
– Evaluate options
– Validate and select a solution
• They may still be selling solutions—but more
broadly, they’re selling insights.

31. THANK YOU