← All insightsFor sales representatives and sales managersArticle · 2022
Four established methods
Most sales methods in use today can be sorted into four main tracks. None of them is wrong, but each has grown out of a particular context and works best there.
- Product selling. Focus on the product's features and benefits, and on closing quickly. Suits simpler deals where the customer already knows what they want.
- Solution selling. Focus on needs analysis and questioning skills. The customer has a problem and is looking for a solution; the sales representative listens and tailors.
- Insight-led selling. The sales representative brings a new idea about the customer's business and challenges the current way of working. Requires the sales representative to be well prepared.
- Influence-based selling. Builds on behavioural science and targeted messages, often digital, to increase knowledge of a product before sales contact is made.
Two axes
META looks at a business situation from two factors. The first is deal complexity, which in the model is determined by how many people are involved and how long the deal takes. More people and more time mean higher complexity, regardless of order value.
The second is customer buying readiness: how far the customer has come from initial interest to a buying decision. A customer who is exploring and a customer who is about to choose a supplier need to be met in different ways, even if the product is the same.
Choosing the method
Put the two axes in a matrix and each method gets its own field. Low complexity and high buying readiness point to product selling. High complexity and high buying readiness to solution selling. High complexity and low buying readiness to insight-led selling. Low complexity and low buying readiness to influence-based selling.
The boundaries are fluid in practice, and all methods can be used in most situations. The point of the model is that the choice becomes deliberate instead of a habit.
How you can use it
Before the next customer meeting: how complex is the deal, and where in the buying process is the customer? Two questions that point to a method. For those who lead sales representatives, the same two questions work in coaching and pipeline reviews, to see whether the way of selling actually matches the situation the deal is in.
Source
Norval Institute, META – en ny modell för situationsanpassad försäljning, article by Roberto Picornell and Anders Torelm, December 2022. The model is described in the book Försäljning – metoder, modeller och säljteknik (Sanoma, 2023).
The text is a summary of the article written for the web. The diagram is our own simplified rendering of the model's two axes and four fields.