How can design thinking revolutionize your sales process?

1 What is design thinking?

Design thinking is a mindset and a methodology that focuses on understanding the needs, desires, and emotions of the people you are designing for. It involves asking open-ended questions, listening actively, observing behaviors, and empathizing with your users. Design thinking also encourages you to generate many ideas, without judging or filtering them, and to prototype and test them quickly and cheaply, to get feedback and learn from failures.

2 Why use design thinking for sales?

Sales is not just about selling products or services, but about creating value and solving problems for your customers. Design thinking can help you discover the real problems your customers are facing, the jobs they are trying to accomplish, and the outcomes they are seeking. By using design thinking, you can create more relevant and compelling value propositions, tailor your sales pitches, and deliver better customer experiences.

3 How to apply design thinking to your sales process?

Design thinking is not a linear or rigid process, but a flexible and iterative one that can be adapted to your own sales context and goals. To begin, research and interview customers, prospects, and stakeholders to gain an understanding of their needs, pains, gains, motivations, and emotions. Then use tools like personas, empathy maps, and customer journeys to synthesize your insights. Next, define the problem you are trying to solve or the opportunity you are trying to seize by utilizing tools like problem statements, how might we questions, and brainstorming. Afterward, choose the most promising ideas and turn them into tangible and testable prototypes using sketches, storyboards, mockups, or role plays. Finally, validate your prototypes with customers, prospects, and stakeholders through surveys, interviews, observations or experiments. Don't worry about perfection or be afraid of failure; instead focus on speed and simplicity while embracing failure as a learning opportunity.

4 How to measure the impact of design thinking on your sales performance?

Design thinking can help you improve your sales performance in various ways, such as increasing customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention, enhancing your value proposition and differentiation, boosting your conversion rates and revenue, and reducing your costs and risks. To measure the impact of design thinking on your sales performance, you need to define clear and relevant metrics and indicators. For example, customer satisfaction can be measured by how happy customers are with the products or services, how likely they are to recommend them, and how they rate their experience with you. Additionally, customer loyalty and retention can be assessed by looking at how often customers buy from you again, how long they stay with you, and how much they spend over time. Your value proposition and differentiation can be determined by evaluating how well you solve customers' problems and meet their needs compared to competitors. Conversion rates and revenue can be calculated by looking at the number of prospects that become customers as well as the amount sold to each customer. Lastly, costs and risks can be assessed by determining the amount spent on acquiring and serving customers as well as reducing the sales cycle and mitigating uncertainties and assumptions.

5 How to foster a culture of design thinking in your sales team?

Design thinking is not only a process, but also a culture. To foster this in your sales team, you should lead by example and show your commitment and enthusiasm for design thinking. Empower your team by giving them autonomy and resources to experiment, and provide them with coaching and feedback. Collaborate with others by involving customers, prospects, and stakeholders in design thinking projects. Seek diverse perspectives and opinions, and create a climate of trust. Continuously monitor and evaluate outcomes and impacts, collect data and evidence, seek feedback, and iterate solutions.