This Data Results in a 61% Win Rate

When you think about the opportunities in your current pipeline, what makes one opportunity better than another? In other words, what determines whether a deal is “good quality” or not?

It’s not an easy question to answer, is it? Especially considering that the primary drivers of deal quality are not about budget, authority, need or timing.

Instead, the biggest contributor to deal quality is buyer input data, which is defined by A Sales Growth Company in the newly published ebook “The Revenue S.P.E.E.D. Model”:

Buyer input data is the specific and unique data and information provided by the buyer that proves that the cost of inaction is greater than cost of action.

This data tells the story of what’s happening in that specific buyer’s world: their business challenges, root causes, desired outcomes, and more. It’s the big WHY of why they should invest in your solution.

After peeking into different sales organizations’ CRMs and their entry/exit criteria per stage, I’ve noticed an alarming absence of buyer input data.

And because the buyer input data is missing, the majority of those opportunities are lost to no decision, or to a competitor.

Proof that buyer input data increases win rates

No matter what sales methodology you use, the focus must be on the buyer.

Painfully obvious? Yes, but in sales we tend to focus on whether the prospect has the money, or whether we’re talking to a decision-maker, or whether or not their current system/process is faulty (when you have a hammer, you search for a nail). That info is focused on us as sellers, not them as buyers.

The Gap Selling framework shifts the focus to the buyer’s world. It requires that we enter into the CRM this specific data about the specific buyer in that specific opportunity:

There is a direct correlation between the quantity and quality of buyer input data, and high win rates (above 60%)!

In fact, the screenshot below reflects the aggregate deal data from organizations who use Gap Selling. Deals in the green have strong field coverage, yellow have mediocre coverage, and red have weak coverage. Notice that the deals in the green have a 61% win rate, and the deals in the green are more than 2X the size of the deals in the red.

We use Noted Analytics for deal scoring (which is owned by ASG), but your CRM administrator could create your own deal scoring system in a similar way.

The overall takeaway is this: in the deals where the rep has captured specific information on the buyer's problems and calculated the Gap, those deals have a win rate of 60% or more.

What else is needed to capture this buyer input data

Along with having a buyer-centric sales methodology, the sales organization must have a coaching culture to support sales reps as they learn to take this approach. It takes time, practice, and open conversation to learn how to capture buyer input data for higher quality deals.

I shared more on this in my newsletter last week about how psychological safety impacts deal quality.

PS Know someone who could benefit from this newsletter? Forward it to them now!

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?? I’m Robin Treasure – Certified Gap Selling Trainer and Coach ?? I share content to help sales leaders and sellers win – by putting their buyers first Ring the ?? on my Profile for more posts like this

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