Sense Making - or helping buyers simply make sense of the information they’ve already encountered - should be at the forefront for almost all sales teams, as it ensures a commercial advantage for sellers in an information-rich environment by increasing customers’ confidence in their decisions.
During her interactive Q&A session at the Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference, taking place virtually through today, Alice Walmesley, Director, Advisory in the Gartner Sales practice, discussed the most pressing questions on how to apply Sense Making to teams in today's dynamic buying environment.
Members of the media who would like to speak with Alice can contact Matt LoDolce to schedule an interview.
Q: What are some of the fundamentals of Sense Making that all sales teams should know?
A: In today’s information era, sellers help customers make sense of the abundance of available information to find the answers needed to make their purchase decisions. When Sense Making, sellers essentially move their chair to the customer’s side of the table, jointly “look out at the market” with the customer, noting the variety of good, and possibly conflicting, information and possibilities, and support them even though the seller may admit it may seem like a mess. It drives high-quality deals by building customers’ confidence and reducing customers’ seller skepticism.
Sense Making is based on an idea that originated from detailed analysis Gartner performed into B2B purchase interactions, which showed customers often felt awash in too much information. It isn’t just any information; this information is good, substantive, evidence-based, and highly credible from suppliers and other third parties.
In this regard, Sense Making is an overall approach to how sellers engage customers with information through the entirety of the purchase experience, and not reliant on only an acute moment. It’s a continuous mindset the seller takes with the customer, always helping the customer reconcile and rationalize the information, variables, and perspectives being encountered.
Q: What are some traits sales leaders should look for when implementing a Sense Making-focused team?
A: Sense Making requires specific skills and enablement support - sales teams cannot rely on skills alone to make Sense Making a reality. Most organizations miss the opportunity to provide centrally created enablement resources that help sellers know what to look for and build an understanding of the information environment - sales leaders shouldn't rely on the individual to do this alone.
Sales organizations need sellers capable of helping customers make sense of the information available to them. There are four competencies that Gartner has identified to look for in a candidate for a Sense Making-focused team: diagnose, connect, clarify and collaborate.
- Diagnose: First, determine the customer buying job where they identify which buying job the customer is working on and whether help is needed to complete the job. Next, identify information needs, where they anticipate customers’ information-related challenges and determine which intervention would best address that need.
- Connect: This is where sales team members select and provide information critical to buying job completion to the customer without overwhelming him/her.
- Clarify: Team members should clarify and coordinate information to help customers reconcile competing claims made by different sources of information.
- Collaborate: Sales team members should help customers evaluate and verify the accuracy and relevance of information by connecting to verifiable sources (collateral, tools, etc.).
Q: How can sales leaders prioritize Sense Making in 2022 and beyond and implement a strong program?
A: The first thing managers should do is map their customers' buying and information journeys and help selling teams diagnose information dysfunction. This allows sales teams to provide sellers with a framework to help them map their customer's unique set of circumstances.
Next, managers should train their teams to identify the customer buying job. This can be done by pressure testing sales teams on their overall understanding of the job by asking “why” the seller believes the customer is in a certain buying job.
Finally, managers can teach how to determine seller intervention. This can be done by emphasizing collaboration and brainstorming strategies with the seller to actualize the identified solution within the customer’s context.
CSOs and sales teams tailoring the entire selling approach according to a customer’s context is necessary for an agile selling approach that drives buyer confidence and consensus. When done right, it can improve buyer decision making quality by more than 10%.
About Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference
Walmesley is providing more detailed analysis on Sense Making during the Gartner CSO & Sales Leader Conference, taking place virtually May 17-18, 2022. At the conference, sales leaders are learning from the latest research and Gartner experts covering sales talent, customer buying behavior, account-based marketing strategies and leveraging digital channels. For the full agenda and to register visit: https://www.gartner.com/en/conferences/na/sales-us.
Gartner clients can learn more about how to properly implement Sense Making within teams in Gartner’s Guide to Sense Making, Webinar on Sense Making and A Comprehensive Guide to the Sense Making Approach.
If you are a member of the media who would like to speak further on these topics with Alice Walmesley, please contact Matt LoDolce at Matt.LoDolce@Gartner.com. Members of the media can reference this material in their articles with proper attribution to Gartner.