What is Gap Selling methodology and how to transform your novice sales reps into ninjas?
Are you "selling a solution" to your prospects or do you try to "fill their gaps" / provide a solution for an actual need?
Last modified by Ben Ford, on Wed Aug 09 2023 02:15:18 GMT-0500 (Central Daylight Time)
Do you think that you sales-reps are not preforming well? Does you sales-team experience one of the following:
Team not converting / low average sales price / long sales cycles / poor pipeline development ?
In order to transform your sales reps into Gap Selling ninjas and in-order to help you systemize the Gap Selling methodology, you will need first understand the main ideas behind Gap Selling. The following paragraph explains the main idea behind Gap Selling and the paragraph after that outlines the general lines by which you can create a sales tool for sales-reps that will help them to boost their sales more easily and quickly using Gap Selling. It is also recommended that at least one senior manager/VP sales will learn a little bit more about the Gap Selling methodology.
What is Gap Selling?
Gap Selling is a sales technique invented by Kenan the CEO of A Sales Growth llc in his bestselling book named "Gap Selling". That technique was devised in order encourage and improve the performance of sales reps. The method encourages sales reps to step into the shoes of their prospects (potential customers) and to learn more about their prospect's problems, the problem's impact and the real need. The method allows a salesperson to interweave the solution that they are trying to sell into the real-life problem experienced by their prospects. The interweaving technique allows prospects to acknowledge or recognize their problem and the problem's impact, once the prospect understand that, the methodology allows the sales rep to guide prospect into a state where he can envision the proposed solution in the context of "his problem" as a viable solution. Once a prospect recognize his need and the meaning of leaving the need unresolved, the salesperson can offer his solution to the problem, this technique triggers a positive emotion toward the salesperson who is trying to help him to overcome a real problem instead of triggering a negative emotion that usually happens when a sales rep is trying to sell you something that you don't need (the emotion that you feel when someone is shoving you something that you do need).
Creating a sales boosting tool
The following proposed sales tool will allow novice salespersons to quickly ramp-up and sell using gap selling technique like a pro (or similar techniques). The following is the manuscript/algorithm for creating such a sales-tool and after that you will find the training manuscript/algorithm for training your sales team to use the sales-tool. If needed, you can use BROSH CRM to create such a centralized sales tool for your reps i.e. for each ideal prospect/industry/role the system will show the rep the relevant questions / answers / objections, this will enable your reps to quickly ramp-up and prepare for their calls.
Creating a sales boosting tool - the manuscript / algorithm:
1) Identify the ideal prospect(s) per industry and role, you can use social media such LinkedIn to find good candidates and to learn more about your prospects.
2) For each ideal prospect, industry and role
a. Identify possible needs / gaps, you may need to talk with few prospects in order to identify the repetitive pattern or a repetitive need.
b. List / write down the most common needs + possible objections + good impact questions that will overcome possible objections.
c. For each need in step B write down possible objections that the salesperson must be familiar with.
3) Review and revise the list created in step 2 on a daily / weekly/ monthly basis and provide the relevant success/failure metrics. Ask your team to summarize their calls and provide a feedback/conclusions for "bad call" with a possible score/feedback for what worked and what didn't work.
a. Revise the list in step 2 according to valid feedback
b. Re-train your sales reps if needed
Training your Salespeople to use the tool:
1) Assign a specific ideal prospects to specific rep and ask the rep to learn by heart the questions, objections and answers.
2) Ask your reps to role play with other reps a typical sales-talk and to listen to other sales-talks made my by other reps.
3) Help the rep to identify the best time to call a prospect and other best practices that helps pro reps to convince their prospects.