Demystifying the Agile Selling Approach

The customer’s journey revolves around a set of buying factors, which are the set of facts, influences, and circumstances that all contribute to the result of a decision to buy or not buy. These factors - the case for change, stakeholder dynamics, and the decision process - are dynamic and interrelated and exert pressure on the customer throughout all stages of the customer’s buying journey. By understanding and identifying these factors, a sales professional can organise a messy buying journey. 

Here we explore these buying factors in greater detail.

The Case for Change

Before a customer can confidently buy, they need to ensure that they have a strong business case to support that decision. The customer’s case for change is not complete until they have evaluated all their options and assessed value vs. risk. 

Any big investment must help the customer achieve their strategic goals and objectives. The case for change revolves around a targeted issue — a problem or opportunity that is severe enough to warrant a change. The sales professional must help the customer compare their options, identify the best solution, and evaluate value vs. risk. 

A common trap is to assume that the customer has already sold themselves internally on the case for change. Fear of change is ever-present. In fact, the closer the customer gets to the purchase, the more their fear rises.

The Stakeholder Dynamics

Managing stakeholder dynamics means influencing and engaging the group of people who make the decision to buy. 

Sales professionals need to build relationships, facilitate alignment, and drive consensus. This cycle takes time. Building alignment is rarely a process of accumulating supporters one by one because early supporters will often change their minds at different points in the process. 

Sales professionals often need to repeat the process of building alignment and check for changes in each stakeholder’s perspective. They must solidify allies and remember that a show of support today promises nothing for tomorrow. 

The key to this process is acknowledging that critics will always be present. In fact, critics are a good sign that the buyers are thoughtfully exploring the solution and evaluating its effectiveness. This is a far better scenario than facing customers who have gone silent and dismissed the solution. Progress comes from surfacing criticisms and seizing the opportunity to address them.

Download this complimentary stakeholder analysis worksheet  to help your team organise their strategy for driving stakeholder alignment.

The Decision Process

The sales professional must help the customer move the decision forward. However, increased complexity makes the decision process difficult to navigate. 

Momentum can stall as new stakeholders emerge, requirements change, and projects get reprioritised. The sales professional’s best tool to overcome this challenge is information. The more they know about how the decision process works, the better prepared they are to be alert to discrepancies and cues revealing who the influencers are in the process. 

With this information, the sales professional is equipped to redirect the process when necessary. Rather than push forward amid resistance, they can encourage those with differing perspectives to come together and discuss where they disagree. 

Conversations help align on the best approach. Everyone involved must be willing to speak the truth and be upfront about concerns. Knowing a stakeholder’s doubts early can prevent last-minute failures that arise because a decision-maker was holding back on their contrary position.

2. Building Consensus

Once a sales professional understands the buying factors behind each of the above categories, they can begin to build consensus by building alignment. Doing so is an increasingly important skill as buying decisions become more diffused in organisations. The challenge, however, is that alignment is not natural. Each stakeholder has individual leanings and likely wants something different from the solution. 

Therefore, building consensus requires applying the skills discussed below:

Clear Communication Skills

The sales professional must assert their perspective. This assertiveness, however, doesn’t mean using exaggerative language or avoiding objectivity in the dialogue. Instead, sales professionals should make their perspective known by expressing it in clear terms free of jargon. 

Jargon and technical language often appear as an attempt to distract or overwhelm the listener. Clear, direct communication in accessible language is effective because it is honest and free of pretention. Finding this communication means being specific in observations. Doing so shows the customer that the sales professional is attentive to details.

Learn to Normalise Risk

Customers are uncomfortable with the risk of implementing a solution. To overcome this hurdle, sales professionals must normalise discussions of risk. That is, they must help the customer understand that all decisions, even no decision, present risk. 

What’s important is that the risks are calculated, rightsized, and outweighed by beneficial outcomes. The sales professional should reduce the customer’s fear and anxiety by adopting a tone that allows concerns to be discussed openly. As the discussion unfolds, the customer will become more comfortable with the change involved in adopting the solution. 

This characteristic of selling is the priming effect at work. The priming effect is the practise of using a stimulus now to prompt an idea later. Sales professionals normalise risk through the priming effect by citing the risks associated with a purchasing decision or the status quo early in the dialogue. Bring concerns of risk out and into the open where they can be addressed.

Ask Reflection Questions

Reflection questions encourage the customer to think more deeply about the topic and fully consider the sales professional’s viewpoint. These questions serve both parties. The sales professional learns more about what matters to the customer. At the same time, the customer is engaging in an exercise designed to help them crystalise their understanding of the challenges and goals they’re facing. 

Reflection questions fall into five main categories: 

Reactions: What are your thoughts on this approach? 

Relevance: How does this solution affect your business? 

Viability: How does this solution fit into your business? 

Value vs. Risk: What would be the value of this to your business? 

Reservations: What hesitations do you have to this solution? 

Reflection questions are a targeted way to check with the customer that the solution capabilities are resonating with their needs. Moreover, these questions go further than simply asking “How does that sound?” because they are specific and lead to details that the sales professional can seize on.

3. Exploring the Customer's White Space

Taking the time to find alignment with the customer offers two key benefits. First, the sales professional illustrates why they are unique relative to the competition. 

Differentiation is crucial as more solutions become commoditised and more competitors enter the picture. Second, understanding and aligning with the customer’s strategy creates value over the long term and opportunities in the short term.

Collaborate with the Customer

Sales professionals must stay up to date on the customer’s changing needs. Doing so requires consistent engagement. Without this level of communication, the sales professional risks presenting solutions and insights that don’t resonate. 

Regular dialogue not only clarifies evolving needs, but it also boosts profitability because fully engaged customers are more profitable than average customers, according to findings from Gallup.

Execute and Update

The customer’s business is not static. Account planning must move in lockstep with these changes. Additionally, new competitors regularly enter the playing field. Updating the strategy protects the relationship against these other players. 

Sales professionals need to use their access to gain feedback from the customer and adjust their approach.

Becoming Agile with Internal and External Practises

Agility is about developing situational fluency in which the sales professional discusses each buyer’s specific business issues, what is causing them, and which capabilities are needed to address those challenges for the customer. Truly adopting an agile approach requires a new set of internal and external practises.

Internal Practises