According to recent research, just 17% of salespeople believe they are pushy, compared to the 50% of prospects also asked.

We aren’t shocked right? That makes a lot of sense. So many tech sales don’t go through to closure, there must be a miscommunication between salespeople who think they are on to something and prospects trying to escape. That’s never going to end well.

The way to close deals has never really changed. It has always relied for the most part on knowing and courting your customers. Let’s face it, if they think you’re pushy and you think you’re not, you probably don’t understand them much at all.

Do your homework. Far too much sales development features on how to push the benefits of the product or solution and far too little relies on listening to the customer, empathy mapping and perhaps spotting challenges that they don’t even realise they have, but suffer from all the same.

Understanding what the customer needs allows the sales approach to be far more authentic with no fear regarding listing any gaps in the solution. Gaps won’t be a problem for the right prospect anyway. Plus, customers are far happier trusting a salesperson who talks realistically about the limitations of their product rather than someone just blindly pushing all the positives.

Taking the latter approach doesn’t just benefit in-person sales but supports social selling when you’re ultimately yelling into a void and it’s quite easy for people to just switch off. That’s if you are pushy of course. If you know them inside and out they really tune in, form brand communities and ultimately become your best brand ambassadors.

There are two ways to get to know your prospects. The modern way and the old-fashioned way—that is to say accurate data and insight or actually just talking to them. Not surprisingly we recommend a mix of both. Not least, because you often need a little bit of data and intelligence to get into a conversation in the first place, but also, because data is only relevant in context and often, for one reason or another, prospects don’t actually always know, or tell the truth about, what they want. They just have a problem that needs solving somehow and a budget or an idea in their head about what they’d be willing to pay for a solution. That’s until they speak to the right salesperson and that could all change.

Data evidencing past behaviour and real-time customer research, demonstrating what they plan for their future, is probably your best chance of gaining a decent understanding of what a prospect might end up buying. This is easier if you’re a fan of account-based marketing and you don’t have an almost unlimited amount of customers to consider. Data shows that 87% of B2B marketers report that ABM outperforms other sales and marketing approaches and that businesses adopting an ABM strategy see revenue grow by 208%. Limiting your focus to less prospects that you can really get to know clearly makes sense. Let us know how you get on.