Do your salespeople really know what their customers expect?

Naturally customer expectations continue to change. Customers today want service, have lots of information at their fingertips to make purchasing decisions, and are adamant about quality, long-term business partnerships with vendors. This means salespeople need to differentiate their products/services, creating value, and build lasting relationships now more than ever. Increasingly, salespeople are asked to take a value-based sales approach and quickly (within the first few interactions) discern needs, expectations, and characteristics of each customer. This can be especially challenging in the often chaotic, impromptu sales environment. Failure to uncover these areas for value creation upfront can result in large gaps between what the customer wants and what the salesperson delivers.

According to expectancy-disconfirmation theory, customer satisfaction depends upon the alignment of buyer expectations and seller performance. Negative disconfirmation occurs when the salesperson fails to deliver. Positive disconfirmation occurs when seller performance meets or exceeds buyer expectations.

To shed light on this subject from both the buyers’ and sellers’ perspectives, academic researchers completed two rounds of in-depth, qualitative interviews with 24 B2B salespeople and 22 customers referred by those salespeople. Through open-ended, iterative analysis, the researchers were able to uncover a set of nine recurring themes in the data.

Three of the recurring themes fall into the category of “zero disconfirmation” meaning that there is significant alignment between both parties’ expectations.

• Creating dialogue –Both buyers and sellers agree that the interaction should be a two-way discussion in which both parties contribute to the conversation.
• Knowledge/expertise – To effectively create value, salespeople must have considerable knowledge about their products, services, and organization’s capabilities.
• Adaptability – Each customer and market is different, so salespeople must be able to adapt their pace and actions to align with the buying process and expectations of each unique customer.

The remaining six themes fall into the category of “negative disconfirmation” meaning that expectations of customers are often not identified and met by sellers.

• Customer insight – Buyers expect sellers to seek a more in-depth understanding of their business including “daily activities,” “processes,” “background,” “strategy,” etc. They seek to be fully understood by salespeople. However, sellers often fail to acknowledge the importance of gaining in-depth customer insight early on in the buying process.
• Long-term partnerships – Buyers indicate a desire to develop lasting partnerships with salespeople and strategic partnerships with the salesperson’s company. They seek alignment between the two firms socially and culturally. Conversely, many salespeople focus merely on the initial sale, seeking higher quantities of sales rather than quality, long-term partnerships.
• Innovative approach – Buyers are interested in salespeople that provide new, innovative, creative insight and ideas regarding ways to improve how they currently conduct business. Conversely, sellers are often more focused on “selling their predefined product, service packages or solutions.”
• Follow-up – Buyers expect that sellers will proactively reach out to follow up and ensure that satisfaction with the product/service is high. While many salespeople understand the value in follow-up, buyers indicate that execution is often lacking.
• Active listening – Both buyers and sellers stress the importance of active listening. However, salespeople often fail to demonstrate interest. When buyers do not feel heard and understood, they may become frustrated and discount the seller’s credibility, resulting in a lost sale.
• Tailored solutions – Buyers don’t want a cookie cutter solution. Rather, they want salespeople to really understand their situation and customize offerings to meet their unique needs. Salespeople seem to recognize the importance of tailored solutions but fail to put this into practice.

To better meet the needs of customers, the research points to a number of opportunities for the selling firm to develop.

To address customers’ focus on innovation and long-term partnerships, salespeople may consider developing their cross-functional team capabilities. Through increased collaboration across the company, buyers will gain greater access to the strategic relationships they seek with the entire firm and there may be increased potential for creative ideation.

The customer’s business must be the focus of sales interactions. Salespeople should engage in dialogue to gain valuable customer insight and truly understand the buyer and their firm. After gaining an in-depth understanding, the seller will be better equipped to create and deliver innovative, value-added solutions to meet the buyer’s unique needs, but it is critical the salesperson adapts to the information.

Short-term opportunities for improvement may include investing in developing salespeople’s skillsets including active listening and follow-up.

Summarized from: Kaski, T.A., Hautamaki, P., Pullins, E.B. and Kock, H. (2017), "Buyer versus salesperson expectations for an initial B2B sales meeting", Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. 32 No. 1, pp. 46-56. https://doi.org/10.1108/JBIM-12-2015-0246

*See original article for citations