Client Insights
Mentor Group has partnered with Cognis Consulting to offer a Client Insights service that drives improved sales effectiveness by uncovering the hidden factors that influence client buying decisions. By understanding these, we enable Sellers to focus every action on what matters most to their prospects.
We use our experience of being on both sides of the buying and selling table and our independent status to speak directly with your client stakeholders in a way you cannot.
We discover their “outside-in” buying experience to identify what really moves the needle for them and what needs to be improved. We also explore how they went about their buying journey from start to finish for a comprehensive picture of what they need, and when they need it.
Why Do You Need Client Insights?
Working with us, sales professionals can understand key challenges and make more informed, strategic, and successful decisions when adjusting their sales approach in order to create value for their customers and themselves.
Buying dynamics are changing
Informed buyers delay engagement with salespeople, limiting understanding and influence. Decentralised decision-making and informal influencers complicate matters. Understanding and predicting customer dynamics helps optimize sales efforts.
Sales is a low-feedback environment
Sales professionals lack reliable feedback to improve engagement. Transitioning to a feedback-rich environment enables customer-centric focus and necessary improvements.
The power of outside-in thinking
Sales leaders must shift to the buyer's perspective to understand what works and improve. Focusing on actions that create buyer value, considering the context, is game-changing.
Understanding client 'ground truth'
Skilled interviewers uncover new information and have unique conversations that other teams cannot. Extracting objective insights from clients, regardless of the outcome, benefits both the sales organisation and the interviewed customers.
How Does It Work?
Working with the senior sponsor and selling team, we use our proven approach to encourage your stakeholders to share their insights through personal, one-to-one interviews.
Our specialist interviewers are experienced in understanding the client stakeholder experience and the formal and informal context within which their decisions were made.
Seeking insights from multiple stakeholders in each client organisation provides various perspectives.
This enables a thorough understanding of how different priorities influence client decision-making.
A typical scope seeks insights from 50 stakeholders from 10 client organisations.
Clients typically provide a wide range of insights, covering several critical areas that include, but are not limited to:
- How their business needs originated
- How potential suppliers were selected and evaluated
- Their understanding of the value proposition vs competitive offerings
- Their engagement with the sales team and broader organisation
- The sources of information they used
- How they evaluated the commercial offer and their experience of the negotiation
- The formal processes, their informal ways of working, and how their decisions were made
What Do You Get Out Of It?
Client Insights, powered by Cognis Consulting, drives improved sales effectiveness by uncovering the hidden factors that influence client buying decisions. We enable sales professionals to focus every action on what matters most. With Client Insights, you benefit from:
- Learning and Improvement: Client Insights help individuals and organisations learn from their experiences and improve their decision making processes. By examining the factors that contributed to a customer buying decision they can identify strengths and weaknesses, understand what went right or wrong, and extract valuable lessons for future endeavours.
- Strategic Decision Making: Analysing the customer buying experience helps evaluate the effectiveness of different strategies, identify market trends, understand customer preferences, and adjust business approaches accordingly. This analysis enables organisations to make informed choices and adapt their tactics to maximise future success.
- Risk Management: Client Insights help identify potential risks and vulnerabilities in business operations. By thinking “outside-in” individuals and organisations can recognise patterns or warning signs, evaluate the impact of different risk factors, and develop strategies to mitigate or avoid similar risks in the future.
- Performance Evaluation: Analysing Client Insights allows individuals and organisations to assess their performance and measure their success. It helps identify KPIs, compare actual outcomes against targets, and understand the factors that influence performance. This analysis enables better tracking of progress and facilitates setting realistic goals and objectives.
- Competitive Advantage: By analysing the customer buying experience individuals and organisations can gain insights into the factors that contribute to competitiveness. This knowledge can be used to position themselves better in the market, differentiate their offerings, and capitalise on opportunities for growth.