Utilizing Buyer Insights to Provide Unique Value in 2022

Although the pivot to virtual working environments has flipped the buyer-seller world upside down, gathering unique buyer insights is still critical in improving customer acquisition effectiveness. Understanding and utilizing these insights helps enablement teams identify the inconspicuous elements driving the decisions of prospective customers, such as evolved preferences and external influences. This knowledge allows for enablement teams to improve messaging and content that supports their revenue teams in cultivating more meaningful buyer connections.

With the implementation of buyer insights, sales reps are better equipped to have impactful conversations with key decision-makers to effectively close deals. Here are four ways that enablement can help revenue teams integrate and leverage buyer insights to build strong relationships with prospects and clients.

Leverage Humanity to Provide Unique Value

Customers are now buying online more than ever, which has further accelerated the shift to a more digital selling environment for reps. Alongside this shift, buyers have become more accustomed to automated workflows and more virtual interactions. This means that it is increasingly important for sellers to leverage the uniquely human aspects of the buyer-seller relationship that automation and AI can not replace to cut through the noise and deliver value.

“It’s important to make sure that when we do have our sellers in front of a customer, that they’re providing valuable insights and information that someone can’t just find online,” said Brittany C. Manopello, director of revenue enablement at Glassdoor. “If you’re providing them value in those conversations beyond what can be sourced in a self-service model or with a quick search on Google, that value becomes the defining component of your relationship.”

To help reps connect effectively with buyers in a digital world, it is important for enablement to focus on the hard skills necessary to gather and analyze buyer insights as well as the soft skills to successfully leverage those insights to create deeper relationships such as openness to learning, adaptability, negotiation, and creativity. Often, a strong sense of connection plays a central role in a person’s decision of where to buy and who to buy from.

Integrate Appropriate Metrics

Data is an integral aspect in sales processes, allowing sales enablement teams to analyze behaviors, understand actions and responses, and customize future approaches for their reps. Metrics that reflect customer sentiments and real-time buyer behaviors can help reps personalize their conversations.

One way that sales enablement professionals can distill this data into digestible formats for reps to utilize in the field is by creating effective sales plays for reps. With guidance that is backed by tangible data, enablement can increase their credibility and earn trust from reps, which is essential in motivating reps to change their behaviors.

Simplify the Buyer’s Journey

As more information becomes readily available through digital tools, buyers have begun to feel overwhelmed by the vast amount of material available to them that they encounter during their buying journey. In order to avoid any fatigue a customer may experience, it is important for sales reps to streamline the buyer experience by making information easily accessible, presentable, and digestible.

“The change in the scope of a salesperson is to now simplify the sales process and the buyer journey, making sure that all the information that [customers] have access to makes sense and is presented in a logical way,” said Nicholas Ghitti, head of growth at Tymeshift.

Established points of communication combined with streamlined information available through a singular source simplifies the process for buyers while providing them with the opportunity to be more intentional with how they spend their time. This reduces the overwhelming nature of the typical sales process as they can focus their attention in one direction where they are fully supported during their buying journey.

Additionally, simplifying the process allows sales reps to establish themselves as specialists, giving them the ability to build long-lasting rapport. Rapport is at the heart of building trust, which adds value to the deal and helps retain customers long-term.

Employ Empathy

There is an increasing need for empathy across all industries and markets, and buyers are now expecting to be understood on a much more personal level. Reps must acknowledge that sales cycles might be longer, and that aggressiveness in follow-ups and agreements might need to be put on the back burner.

“Everyone is going through something during the pandemic, either on the professional or personal level, and we want to make sure that we truly understand what the client or prospect is dealing with and then show our empathy in that way,” said Ghitti.

Employing empathy can range from identifying pain points, to asking clarifying questions, engaging on a personal level, and finding common ground. This helps to eliminate lack of trust that is often amplified due to digital pollution, humanizing the sales experience and making prospects feel more than “just a sale.”

Rather than solely focusing on the sale itself, reps need to learn to embrace the journey and the relationship they are building with their respective prospect. Adapting to changing times highlights that they are acting in a customer’s best interest, while simultaneously building trust at the beginning that can then persist throughout the duration of their relationship.

The ways in which buyers are interacting with sales professionals is undergoing a major transformation, yet fundamental knowledge of the buyer-seller relationship still plays an integral role in real relationships. A key aspect in these relationships is the integration of buyer insights, which allows sellers to effectively navigate conversations with prospects and clients.

Beyond helping in generating certain leads, insights are helpful in developing and maintaining key buyer relationships that ultimately result in long-term customers, regardless of the transformational nature of the selling environment.

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