The conceptual selling methodology – a guide to winning sales

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.

What is the conceptual selling methodology?

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.

How can you effectively conceptually sell?

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?

Conceptualise the benefits of your product or service

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.

Research your customers beforehand

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:

• Surveys
• Questionnaires
• Industry reports
• Focus groups
• Interviews

Focus on active listening

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.

Ask the right questions

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:

• What pain points are you facing?
• How long have you been facing this challenge?
• Who will make the final decision on how to solve this challenge?
• What is the budget that can be allocated to solving these pain points?

Context questions

These next questions should carry on from the initial questions to get further insights into the customer’s context:

• Have you tried other solutions to fix your problem?
• What other solutions have you tried to use?
• How is [customer’s problem] limiting your success?
• How many stakeholders are involved with this problem?

Attitude questions

Find out more about your customer’s attitude to finding a solution:

• How do you feel about using this solution for your product?
• How quickly do you want to solve this challenge?
• Do you have any apprehensions about moving forward with this?

Commitment questions

Finally, it is time to ask the questions you need to try to complete the sale:

• When will you make a final decision to solve your challenge?
• What information do you require to make a decision?
• What decision maker still needs to decide?

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.

Differentiate your product or service

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.

The game-changing benefits of conceptual selling  

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.

Increase your data visibility to drive your conceptual selling methodology with TEB

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:

• Personalise your service – Through TEBs report generator and customer storyboards, get a better understanding of your client’s wants, needs and requirements to offer them a great service to close out deals.
• Increase collaboration – Leave notes with important information on customers, as well as assign actions to team members to have a collaborative winning sales team.
• Drill down on data – Use TEBs lead funnels to organise your clients to drill down on your data, learn more about your customers and prioritise the deals you can win.
• Track your sales performance – Use TEBs business count feature to get a numerical view of how your sales activity is performing across your pipelines to understand how effective your sales strategy has been.

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.