Your sales team can get bogged down in the details. When you start pitching features, numbers, and data, you risk losing your buyer on a wave of too much information.
Conceptual selling can help B2B brands refocus their sales strategies on potential clients rather than details by selling a concept, not a product. It turns your products into stories that connect with buyers on a personal level, helping them achieve their goals, solve their problems, and improve their business success.
In this article, we’ll define conceptual selling and how to use it to improve your B2B sales experience.
What is Conceptual Selling?
Conceptual selling is pitching a product as a solution to a buyer’s problem rather than as a list of features and data. It uses the buyer’s problems and experiences as a focal point, emphasizing a product’s ability to solve those problems over the nuts-and-bolts data.
Let’s look at an example.
A SaaS provider could tell buyers about its extensive integrations, top-of-the-line security features, and intuitive user interface.
Or, using conceptual selling, it could tell the buyer that its software for sales helps clients hit revenue targets by working straight out of the box and suffering less downtime than competitors.
In the second strategy:
- The seller isn’t gushing about their product’s many features.
- The seller talks less and has more time to listen to the buyer.
- The buyer’s needs become the focal point of the deal.
- The seller can use this more emotional, needs-based approach to pitching their product.
- The product becomes a concept, helping the buyer reach their goals and streamline their business.
What are the Benefits of Conceptual Selling?
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A concept is easier for a buyer to wrap their head around.
Information is a wonderful selling tool – buyers need details about features, prices, and other practical minutiae – but information-heavy pitching can also detract from the product’s value. You can lose your buyer’s attention, confuse them, or bog them down in too many details.
Conceptual selling sells the product as a whole solution, not as a sum of its parts. Sales reps create a concept around the product, an idea that this product provides value, solves problems, and improves lives.
The advantages of the conceptual selling process include:
- Encouraging sales reps to understand the needs of the clients, creating a more customer-centric approach.
- Teaching sales reps to pitch on a more emotional, empowering, and connective level
- The ability to craft more personalized sales pitches.
- Building deeper, lasting relationships with clients.
- Stronger ongoing relationships that create higher-value clients who become advocates for your business.
- Creating a more customer-centric sales process and positive customer experience.
How to Use Conceptual Selling to Improve the Sales Experience
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Here’s how you can start reframing your selling process around the buyer rather than your brand and products.
Ask questions
To sell conceptually, you need to understand how your buyer thinks, feels, and behaves.
Asking the right questions not only provides this vital information, it also helps your potential client feel heard and understood. This is the first step to building a relationship.
Whether you’re meeting in person, emailing back and forth, or on a video call, the first point of contact with your new buyer is where you discover the information you need to make your sale.
It’s also important to ask thought-provoking questions that get your buyer talking at length. In their words, you might find valuable pieces of information you wouldn’t have gotten through simple Q&A.
Confirm your research
Confirmation questions that check the validity of your research build a foundation of knowledge for your conceptual selling pitch. You can frame these questions as confirmative to show that you’ve invested in the research:
- I understand you’re the person who makes purchasing decisions, yes?
- Your company provides [product or service] to [certain industry or demographic], is that right?
- You’re currently using [product or service] from [your competitor], so how’s that going for you?
- I understand you’re facing [problem]. Can you tell me more about how that affects [relevant part of their business]?
Determine the buyer’s objections
Before you launch into your conceptual selling pitch, it’s a good idea to gauge any objections that might throw up roadblocks. That way, you can build solutions to those objections into your concept.
- What is your budget?
- Are you open to trying something new?
- What’s stopping you from solving this issue now?
Determine the issues
Conceptual selling relies on selling the solution, so asking basic issue questions is vital to shaping your strategy.
- What are your main problems?
- How much do these problems cost you?
- Do you have targets you can’t meet?
- How quickly would you like to implement a solution?
Listen more and talk less
As we said above, your goal is to get the buyer talking.
People love to talk, and they appreciate being heard. When people talk, they can reveal things you might never have learned in a simple sales meeting – things that can help you personalize your conceptual selling process even further.
For example, you might enter a meeting with a potential client who doesn’t need the product you’re pitching after all. But in conversation, they might let slip that their business phone lines aren’t equipped for the customer support call volume they’re currently experiencing. If you also provide a virtual call center, that conversation has found you a new opening to make a sale.
Understand the client’s buying process
Today’s buyers are more informed than ever, and they go into the buying process knowing exactly what they want. Your job is to create a win-win scenario where your sales process aligns with their buying process.
A 2023 report by marketing and sales data company 6sense found that the majority of B2B buyers were already deep into their buying process (around 70%) before ever connecting with a seller – with little variation across industry, size of purchase, or size of company.
Buyers also set their requirements before interactions, with only 18.4% moderately changing requirements and 4% drastically changing requirements upon interacting with a seller.
Buyers know what they want, and it’s difficult to change their minds. Your selling process must align with their buying process to move things forward.
Conceptual selling is the perfect answer to this conundrum, because the buyer is looking for a solution, not a hard B2B sales pitch with a fast-talking salesperson.
The more you get to know your potential clients, the better you can understand their sales process and align your concept to their goals.
Personalize every interaction
Conceptual selling’s focus on deep understanding makes it easier to personalize each interaction with your potential client. After all, you already know them, their needs, their business goals, and their struggles.
Showcase this understanding by:
- Reminding the potential client about how your concept solves the unique problems they’ve informed you about.
- Remembering and calling back to previous conversations and details.
- Addressing questions they’ve had during previous interactions.
- Offer potential clients ways to contact you personally with any questions or issues, such as giving them your phone number.
Personalization helps to build stronger relationships with clients and create customer loyalty.
Emphasize your value over competitors
As we said, B2B buyers are already deep into their buying process before connecting with a seller. They know your competitors.
Without conceptual selling, sales reps might compare features, price points, and data sets that prove your company beats your competitors. However, this approach can be confusing, complicating the interaction with too much information.
Conceptual selling allows you to emphasize value in a more relatable way:
- We had 10% less downtime than [competitor company] last year.
- Our clients report 10% higher conversion rates using our [product].
- We recently acquired [company] from [competitor] and they report an increase in revenue.
The concept is that your product can help clients achieve goals better than your competitors can.
Embrace storytelling
B2B businesses tend to give themselves less creative license than B2C companies. They focus on facts and figures, not storytelling.
Conceptual selling, however, allows you to turn your product into a story.
When crafting your conceptual selling story, remember to:
- Be relatable – keep your story focused on your product’s positive effects on real people and realistic scenarios.
- Keep it realistic – don’t create expectations that can’t be met.
- Be honest – don’t be tempted to embellish or make things up about your products.
- Stay on topic – keep storytelling focused on selling your concept, and don’t veer off on tangents.
Storytelling is one of the oldest forms of human expression, and stories fundamentally connect us. Conceptual selling lets you craft an interesting story for your buyer that can help create stronger, lasting relationships.
Using Conceptual Selling to Provide a Better Sales Experience
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Conceptual selling helps you reframe your sales strategy around your potential clients. Instead of pitching features and data, you’re pitching concepts and solutions, ultimately connecting with your buyers on a deeper, more relatable level.
So remember the key components of conceptual selling:
- Talk less, listen more, and ask questions.
- Develop a deep understanding of your buyer.
- Find areas where your product connects with their needs and struggles.
- Craft a story that makes your product relatable to them.
- Offer your product as a solution to their problems.
Conceptual selling can help you build lasting client relationships, improve the customer experience, and convert more leads into sales.
Originally published Aug 13, 2024, updated Aug 28, 2024
