Account & transactional selling are both important parts of the sales process, but they are often misunderstood. This blog post will define what both of these are, how to tell if an opportunity is more suited for one or the other, and how to use them in your own business. Professional Business Owners! Don't miss out on this great opportunity to learn about Account Selling & Transactional selling!
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When it comes to selling, there are a couple of popular theories as to how an ideal sale should go. There is the consultative sales approach where a seller focuses on building rapport with a prospect and understanding their challenges before helping them find an appropriate solution that works best for them. But increasingly, it is being recognized that account selling is the more ideal sales process, followed by transactional selling.
Account selling puts emphasis on understanding an organization -- not just an individual -- and works to identify multiple decision-makers within that single account. The idea is to target specific accounts with tailored messages, content, and engagement strategies.
Whereas transactional selling is when a salesperson identifies customer needs through conversations with potential clients and then uses that information to guide them towards making a purchase. This approach focuses on the moment-to-moment development of small transactions instead of pursuing larger, long-term contracts or connections between companies.
What separates it from transitional selling (which comes before) is that consultative selling requires more open communication than simply asking questions about current problems, needs, or recent purchases so that individuals may come up with it.
For years, salespeople have been taught to treat every opportunity like it's unique and tailor their selling process accordingly (i.e., account-based selling); however, the ideal customer profile has always existed; you just had to know where to find it.
This concept refers to creating a detailed list of criteria that represent your overall client personas (such as industry, revenue size, etc) but also more granular information about what specific needs they may have so you can focus on them more effectively during your outreach efforts.
Also important is having the ability to understand who within an organization is most likely to purchase from you so there is no guesswork when it comes to outreach.
As mentioned above, account selling is a targeted approach to marketing and sales that focuses on specific accounts. There are several benefits of this method of approaching clients -- it can help you generate more revenue, create deeper relationships with customers, increase buyer perception of your business, track ROI, etc. Whereas, as we move forward, we would talk about transactional selling too.
The framework for ABM looks something like this:
1. Internal Alignment
2. Create an Ideal Customer Profile
3. Create Specific Buyer Personas
4. Develop Your Account Targeting Strategy
5. Build a Targeted Outreach Strategy
6. Campaign Analysis and Testing
Now that you know the importance of creating an ideal customer profile and account-based selling, let's walk through each step of the process so we can establish a more complete understanding of the account selling:
1. Internal Alignment -
This first stage is all about aligning your team, both inside and out of the sales department, to ensure everyone has a clear picture of what type of company and buyer personality you're after. If this isn't already apparent then this will be your perfect opportunity to gain consensus around what you want to accomplish as well as who your target accounts should be (should be no secret by now).
I like to start by taking our employee roster and segmenting it based on job roles and/or department while also looking at current client lists to identify who we've worked within the past.
This will result in a comprehensive list of both types of people, some who may have been involved in previous sales and others who may not have but could make important contributions to the effort.
2. Create an Ideal Customer Profile -
There's no doubt that soliciting input from stakeholders makes it easier to gain consensus on what you're targeting. However, there isn't just one way to create your ideal customer profile (and keep in mind you can always add more detail as time goes on).
Regardless of how you do it, these are the accounts most likely to buy from you so we want them detailed down to the smallest of details so you have a clear picture of what you're looking for.
Doing so will allow you to create buyer personas, which are essentially the specific types of people who will be involved in the decision-making process. Ideally, this list should include more than just names and titles but also include relevant information such as geographic location/distribution by territory or region, size of the company in terms of revenue or number of employees, main decision-makers vs. influencers, role in the purchase process (i.e., early adopters vs. late majority), etc.
Anything that makes it easier to understand where they fit into your overall sales strategy and outreach efforts to get them engaged with your content and determine whether or not they're even a good fit in the first place.
3. Create Specific Buyer Personas -
Once you have your ideal customer profile in hand, we can start to create specific buyer personas by breaking down each element of the larger target account into its individual components and adding any relevant details that can help you narrow down who it is exactly that will be making the purchase decision; i.e., we'll focus on industry (or market), revenue size or the number of employees, and organizational structure (i.e., horizontal vs. vertical).
4. Create Your Account Targeting Strategy -
By this point, you should have a solid understanding of what type of companies and/or individuals you want to target with your selling efforts so it's now time to create your account-targeting strategy. This is the process of identifying which accounts you want to engage with, why, and how you'll go about doing so whether it's through social selling efforts, nurturing programs, etc. The main objective here is to familiarize potential customers with who you are and what value your product or service provides while establishing yourself as a thought leader in that particular industry/market vertical.
5. Build a Targeted Outreach Strategy -
Your targeted outreach strategy is all about identifying where each type of buyer will be spending their time online (i.e., social networks) and developing an approach for reaching out to them on those specific platforms. While also understanding where they're most likely receiving information about topics that are relevant to your offering.
For example, if you're selling cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) software targeted towards small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), the people who typically buy this type of product won't be contacting vendors directly.
They'll either be finding out about it through their accountants or financial advisors. By taking the time to research where each target customer would come in contact with these types of individuals, we can make sure our content is easily accessible to them when they need it most by putting ourselves in front of more potential buyers at decision-making time.
So, now that we've identified our ideal customers and how they'll find out about our offering in the first place. It's now time to build a targeted outreach strategy that will help us better engage with them when they are in need of our services or products.
This is where things get fun because this is where you have the ability to create all sorts of different strategies based on what makes sense for your business, your customers, and the types of sales activities you want to focus on (i.e., nurture programs vs. social selling). This is one of the best ways of account selling.
The main objective here is to determine how you want prospects to come into contact with your content so they not only learn more about what you do but also see value in what you have to say regardless of whether or not there is an immediate need for your product or service.
6. Campaign Analysis and Testing -
Your final step in this process is to analyze your campaign. Take a look at the overall results you received from each activity along with how it impacted different types of buyers within your target accounts.
This would help you determine what worked well for you, what didn't, where there are opportunities to expand upon an idea or take it in a completely different direction. Use this to know how to engage potential customers through social selling efforts and nurturing programs.
Now that we have learned about account-based selling and its important framework in detail. Let us move ahead with transactional selling and why is it so important in the current age.
Transactional selling is when you don't have a relationship with the customer, but are trying to sell them something. This can include cold calling, online marketing, or even door-to-door sales.
This differs because, in this scenario, there is no pre-existing relationship between you and the person you're selling to. The interpersonal connection doesn't exist yet, so all of your communication must be focused on establishing one before closing the sale.
You need to work fast and get through all the necessary steps as quickly as possible before moving on to someone else.
Transactional vs. Transitional Selling
In these selling situations (one where there is an existing relationship between the seller and the customer), the focus is on building a relationship.
This is done through shared experiences, finding common interests, asking questions that are related to the needs of the individual customer, etc.
These interactions are more casual in nature, with less focus on closing deals. These selling relationships can be with both pre-existing customers as well as prospects who have not yet purchased your product/service before.
Transactional vs. Consultative Selling
Consultative selling occurs when you have an existing relationship with your customer and are trying to assist them by offering additional solutions or services they may need based on their current issues/needs/wants. This requires having an open about your customers' problems so you can focus on selling products that specifically address their needs.
How to Create Value in Transactional-Based Selling?
In this type of sales situation, you must approach it from a position where you're asking for advice rather than trying to give it. Your goal is not to provide an answer but rather get the client thinking about how you can make their business better. You do this by helping them solve some part of their problem while using your product or service as a solution.
There are a few key steps in creating value when transactional-based selling:
Let us talk about each point one by one in detail.
1. Explain what the customer can gain!
The first step is to get them interested in your product!!
One way to do this is through the "street light" method, which involves asking an open-ended question that gets them talking about their problems. Once they start acting like a salesperson and telling you how great the product/service works and why it's so helpful, they will naturally want to know more about what you're offering.
Once they tell you what their biggest problem with [xyz] is, find out if your product can solve it and explain how once again in terms of benefits they'll gain by using it. This strategy not only helps sell your products but also makes it easier for customers to remember who you are when buying time comes along.
2. Establish common interests as soon as possible
Once you have their attention, the next step is to find common ground with them so they feel more comfortable around you. The best way to do this is by asking questions that are related to what they are currently dealing with.
For example, if the person you're talking to has a small business, ask them about how many employees they have so you know how to frame your product's benefits in relation to their company. If it's a family-owned business, then tell them about your kids or something similar that can help open up conversation and form connections between each other.
Always try meeting people where they're at - no matter who they are, chances are there's some part of your life that overlaps with theirs.
The easiest way to do this is by using words like "we," "our," and "us" when talking about yourself and your company (e.g., we understand what it's like to be in your shoes). This also works well when describing problems customers may face (e.g., we know how important [insert relevant topic here] is to our customers). It creates a sense of familiarity and lets your customer know that you're a normal person just like them.
3. Prioritize your relationships
Once you're comfortable with one another, prioritize your relationship. This means approaching each encounter as if it might be the last time you see this customer. Your goal should always be to create value for them so that they'll want to come back and buy from you again in the future
Customers prefer to work with people they can trust, so prioritize the ones who have been loyal to you over those who have not. This is especially important if you have several customers from different companies.
You don't want to lose sight of the other people in your life because it may cause problems later on down the line when they need something from you and you're too busy helping a new client.
4. Listen actively
Listening is an underrated skill for salespeople, but it can make all of the difference between walking out of a meeting feeling like you pitched the perfect product/service and walking out feeling like you were doing most of the talking or repeating yourself over and over again.
Be prepared to listen through any sort of distraction because people will often say things off-handedly that may interest you (and help sell your product).
In a transactional selling situation, this means being deeply involved in conversations while listening carefully for clues that tell you what motivates your clients - money, status, etc. This knowledge helps you move forward and avoid wasting time trying to sell products and services the client doesn't need.
5. Show passion and trust for your product/service
While listening, show clients that you're passionate about your product/service. When you really believe in something it shows and becomes contagious. This is even more important during sales presentations because if a client sees how much you care about what you do, they'll be inclined to listen with interest instead of getting distracted by other things going on around them.
This also applies to showing clients how trustworthy your values are as a company - the only way to do this is by speaking honestly and accurately about anything related to your business from its history to pricing information. If they don't trust you then chances are they won't put their faith in the product/service either - which means no sale for you!
When selling a new product or service, people tend to show more interest when they feel like it's something you believe in — i.e., you should genuinely love what you're selling (and if not, fake it). This shows customers that there is a benefit for them as well as confidence in your company.
6. Reconnect with customers
When a client comes back to do business with you, remember all of the things you talked about during your initial meeting. You want them to feel like their experience is better than the last time they worked with you. This can be achieved by remembering key pieces of information from past meetings and conversations.
It shows the customer that you listened and cared about what they had to say. This keeps things casual so everybody feels at ease and comfortable doing business together again because they have built a relationship with you over time.
7. Show patience
Above all else, show patience when working with customers or potential clients. They probably have a lot going on in their lives right now so it's understandable if they're being difficult or indecisive - just because someone isn't buying doesn't necessarily mean they're not interested in doing business with you eventually!
All businesses go through good times and bad times. If you keep working hard no matter what, you can help your business reach new heights in the future once the client has enough time to think it over and see its value for themselves.
In Conclusion
Both these selling requires you to accept the fact that most of the people at your customers' company will not be familiar with your product/service so being patient is key to their success. Don't expect them to understand all of the benefits immediately because it's not something they are exposed to on a regular basis, so allow them time to absorb everything you tell them.
