What do you think is more important, your product, or the concept of your product? Although your product or service is very important, the concept behind how your offering can help peoples pain points is what will be the difference between winning a sale or not. This is where conceptual selling comes into play. In this article, we will look at what conceptual selling is, and how you can use it to drive your sales.
Conceptual selling is a selling methodology that Robert Miller and Stephen Heiman created. This strategy is based on the idea that a customer is not buying your product from you, but instead buying the concept of how your product will offer them a solution to their challenges.
Your sales representatives much take an approach to your customers that they are not selling a product, but instead a concept. But how can they do this?
Your sales representatives should not focus on what the product or service is, but instead on the benefits that you will bring them. For example, if you sell a new laptop to someone, instead of focusing on the specifications of the hardware, focus on the benefits it will bring the customer, such as more efficiency, less risk of malfunctions and more.
The more you know about your customers the better, and research is crucial for this. Crunchbase shares that the top-performing salespeople research their prospects for an average of six hours per week. You can research your customers through:
With conceptual selling, listening is more important than speaking. This is because your sales representatives will need to listen to your customer’s pain points and context. Your sales representatives will then be able to get a good idea of how your product or service can help the customer, allowing them to effectively sell the concept to the client.
Getting information from your customers about their situation is crucial for conceptual selling, and to do this effectively you must know what questions to ask your customers. The types of questions you should ask your customers can be broken down into four sections.
Discover/confirmation questions
These first questions have the intention of finding out who your customer is and their background:
Context questions
These next questions should carry on from the initial questions to get further insights into the customer’s context:
Attitude questions
Find out more about your customer’s attitude to finding a solution:
Commitment questions
Finally, it is time to ask the questions you need to try to complete the sale:
These questions will help guide your sales representatives through their conceptual selling process as they will find out the valuable information they need to complete a deal.
Your sales representatives should ensure that they differentiate your product and service from competitors through the concept they sell. For example, once you sell your concept to the customer, link unique benefits and perks to the concept, like the accessibility of your product or service and the support the customer will get when using it.
An example of a big brand that differentiates itself from competitors effectively is Apple. Apple differentiates itself from competitors through slick designs that incorporate the latest technology. But instead of selling their products with a focus on the new technology, they focus on how it will make the consumer feel with slick and accessible products.
By incorporating the conceptual selling methodology into your business, you will benefit greatly from the customer-centric approach such as:
Differentiate your concept – The conceptual selling method will drive your conversion rates by differentiating yourself from your competitors. If your product is similar to others in the market, you can differentiate the concept behind your offering as your unique selling proposition.
Build a rapport through selling your concept – By selling the customer the concept of how you are able to help their pain points, you will be able to better build trust and a rapport with customers to create long-term relationships.
Target the right customers – When selling a concept to a customer, it is much more likely that you can identify if the customer is the right fit for your product or service. You can see if the benefits of your product and service match the customer’s pain points.
TEB, the sales automation CRM software, can act as the backbone for your conceptual selling. TEB will bring you invaluable benefits to your sales process such as:
Want to see these benefits for yourself? Book a demo and with just 30 minutes of your time you can see how TEB will help your business boost your sales, drive revenue and grow your business.
