GPIV® an interviewing approach that gives you competitive advantage Peter Coeckelbergh 19 January 2018 Most likely the most important core competence of consultants, account managers and sales people is to gain “insight” in the organisation of their contacts and prospects. Acclivus Corporation (www.acclivus.com) defines “gaining Insight” as “looking beyond the obvious”. Those insights create the opportunity for the selling organisation to offer more value than your competitors. This is exactly what will differentiate your organisation and create customer preference and retention. The structure below is inspired by the Acclivus model. It’s geniality lies in the simplicity.
InformaWon
Sustainable RelaWonship
Insight
Trust
Added Value
We can see that there is a logic relationship between the information we have about our customer, the differentiating insights we develop and the value we can offer to our customer. This proves that it is no longer sufficient to just listen to your customers to make the difference. Hence the listening capabilities of your organisation is the first and extremely important step. Old school sales training would therefore teach people which questions to ask. How often did it happen that I asked sales people what this meant for them? Too often the answer was limited to: It is important to ask open questions. My point of view is not to focus on the question but to focus on the information you want to have about your customer or prospect. Much of this information is available on internet, often on the site or on news sites. Financial information can be found on specialised sites. A professional sales man should spend sufficient time to look this information up before meeting the customer. This information however can be found by
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Peter Coeckelbergh 21 January 2018