Author: Falon Fatemi / Source: Forbes
Creativity is a trait not often associated with sales professionals. Instead, the sales profession is commonly associated with routine activities such as cold calling and hitting increasingly challenging quarterly quotas.
The most effective sales professionals avoid routinizing their approach to sales.
They leverage their creativity to gain a leg up on competitors. The payoffs can be enormous. Research from the Aston Business School, one of Europe’s largest business schools, found that sales professionals who were more creative generated higher sales than their less creative counterparts.Imbuing creativity into the sales pitch
Far too many salespeople rely on boilerplate sales pitches and product demos. In conversations with prospects, there is a lack of personalization. They highlight the same features and value propositions. The result is cause for concern: 82% of sales professionals are not aligned with the needs of the buyer.
Creative sellers resist the temptation to adopt one-size-fits-all selling approaches. Instead, they tackle the challenge of selling with a consultative lens. They take the time to listen to and learn from customers so as to understand their specific needs. Armed with this intel, they craft scripts that are relevant to and customized for each individual buyer.
This personalized approach is highly effective. According to Infosys, 86% of consumers say personalization plays a role in their purchasing decisions. Customers appreciate sales professionals who are creative problem solvers and take the time to understand how their product or service is uniquely positioned to help each customer achieve his/her business outcomes.
Leveraging creativity to customize offerings and handle objections
In 1909, Henry Ford famously proclaimed, “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants, so long as it is black.” While the statement is extreme, far too many B2B sales reps adopt a perilously similar philosophy. Most will offer one product with two or three pricing tiers (a free, premium, and enterprise tier, for example). They won’t be flexible in terms of customizing offerings according to the needs of individual customers. By and large, sales offerings lack creativity and are often set in stone.
Creative sales professionals are a different bread. They don’t conceptualize the sales process as a transaction, but rather as a problem-solving activity. They are flexible. If a prospect or existing customer pushes back with an objection, they’ll think creatively about how the problem can be solved. When, for example, price is an issue, they’ll be quick to consider offering discounts if acquiring the customer offers benefits beyond monetary rewards (for example, added brand awareness, a strategic partnership, an opportunity for a lucrative referral or introduction, or an opportunity to enter a new sector or category of the market).
When, on the other hand, a customer pushes back on account of a product limitation, creative sales professionals get…
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