Listen, Learn, Engage
The Criticality of a Thorough Needs Analysis
This week as I spent time with many veteran sales professionals (with 15-30 years of sales experience) at a sales workshop, I was reminded of how important a thorough needs analysis is to a healthy and prosperous relationship; especially the criticality of understanding your customers’ personal needs, and not just with new relationships.
These are a few of the tips/reminders that these sales professionals said were extremely valuable in their world. See if they resonate with you and your sales team.
- Use a good questioning strategy. At times, we fall victim to our own level of experience and forget to be consistent in practicing a good questioning strategy. It’s easy to ask one question about business goals and skip follow-up questions that would deepen our understanding of the organization. Too often we gloss over or completely leave out specific questions or we don’t receive a response from the customer that is quantifiable.
- Understand their business. No matter how well we think we perform this component of the needs analysis, we often fall short. Typically, we try to understand a customer’s business and goals as they relate to our own business and what we sell. Although this is, of course, part of the sales process, shouldn’t we also consistently be practicing old-fashioned curiosity about them and their business needs?
- Understand personal needs. Regardless of how long we have “known” our contact(s), we should be constantly striving to understand what’s truly important to them in addition to meeting their company’s goals. This is especially true with long-term relationships. Sometimes we become too comfortable with a great relationship and begin to assume that we understand their needs versus actually inquiring about them.
When was the last time you analyzed or reviewed your customers’ needs and business?
One Comment
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Amy I’m there with you! Regardless of the company, the size, the channel, this is where I spend most of my coaching time when sales are getting stuck. Especially with the seasoned, because they are more inclinded to begin to believe that they can “read” the customer without having to ask all the questions.
About the author
Amy Evans
“I’m all about coaching people to excel in their careers—and I appreciate having the opportunity to work directly with clients to determine the best training solution to meet their needs.” Experience: 15 years in consultative selling, coaching and mentoring, facilitating sales and sales leadership courses, and developing course content
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