Understanding Before Proposing Solutions

We all know that we need to gain a sufficient understanding of our customers’ needs and specific situations before proposing solutions – and before presenting most demos. Here’s an additional reason to do this:

Miller Heiman, Inc. reports in their Executive Summary of their 2009 Sales Best Practice Study that 93% of “World Class” vendors vs. 50% of “All” vendors do “Clearly understand our customers’ issues before we propose a solution”. “World Class” organizations achieved stronger results in five areas measured:

- Average account billing
- Sales force quota attainment
- Number of qualified opportunities/leads
- Customer retention
- Forecast accuracy

Not surprising…!