Are you struggling to close deals despite having a great product? What’s Gap Selling by Keenan about?
Keenan’s book Gap Selling presents a revolutionary approach to sales that shifts focus from product features to customer challenges. The methodology teaches salespeople how to identify and leverage the gap between a customer’s current situation and their desired future state.
Read more in our brief Gap Selling book overview.
Overview of Gap Selling
Do you feel like your sales process just isn’t delivering the results you want? In his book Gap Selling, Keenan argues that you may need to shift your focus—from the product you are trying to sell to your customer’s problems and how you can solve them. His approach calls on you to ask probing questions and get to the root of your customer’s issue. This not only increases the likelihood of a sale, but allows you to provide your customer with a true solution instead of a superficial quick fix.
Keenan is the CEO of the consulting firm A Sales Guy Inc. and the host of the podcast Gap Sell Keenan. He draws on years of experience in B2B sales to lay out a practical framework for improving your sales techniques at every step of the process. Our guide offers insights for salespeople, managers, and business professionals who want to improve their sales. We’ll explore Keenan’s ideas in three parts.
- Part 1: Why Customers Buy builds the foundational knowledge for his Gap Selling method, exploring the factors that drive customers to seek out your product and commit to the sale.
- Part 2: Making the Sale covers Keenan’s method for sales, from discovering and evaluating the value you can provide, to dealing with customers who start backtracking.
- Part 3: Managing a Sales Team relates Keenan’s advice for leading a team of effective sales representatives.
Part 1: “The Gap” and How It Drives Sales
Keenan’s selling technique is based on figuring out how you can address a customer’s needs. In this section, we’ll first discuss the factors that motivate a customer’s purchase and how Keenan’s sales techniques respond to them. Finally, we’ll explore Keenan’s method for uncovering what will drive your customer to buy from you.
What Drives a Customer to Buy?
Keenan discusses two main reasons why customers buy: to overcome a problem, and because you offer them a solution.
1) To Overcome a Problem
Keenan emphasizes that all sales originate from a customer’s problem:Without a clear issue to address, there’s no reason for them to look for a solution. That is, if a customer is perfectly content with their situation, they have no need to buy anything, and you’re unlikely to make any headway on a sale. On the other hand, he says, if they have some difficulty, challenge, or problem, you can position your product or service as a solution.
2) Because You Offer Them a Solution
While having a problem kicks off the buying process, it isn’t enough to make a customer buy. According to Keenan, there’s a second part to the equation: Customers will only buy if you offer them a solution. Keenan encourages you to conceptualize the customer’s issue as a gap—the distance between their present condition (that is, their issue) and their ideal future condition. The ideal future condition is one in which their issue is resolved and they’re free to pursue their business goals. Customers will buy if your solution closes their gap by bringing them into their ideal future state.
For example, a small e-commerce startup is losing sales because their website’s load times are so slow that customers are abandoning their carts before completing purchases. Their present condition is one of frustrated customers and lost sales. Their ideal future condition is one of frictionless transactions and increased sales. A product that would bridge the gap is a faster website that effortlessly handles high volumes of customer traffic.
Discovering Your Customer’s Gap
Now that we’ve defined Keenan’s “gap” concept, we’ll discuss his strategies for identifying your customer’s gap. According to Keenan, discovery—the process of asking questions to learn about your prospective customer’s gap—is the most important part of the sales process. He encourages you to think of discovery not as a single stage that you complete once and are done with, but as an ongoing process that can continue throughout the sale, so long as you’re talking to your customer and getting to know more about them.
He provides three goals for understanding your customer’s gap during an effective discovery: become an expert in your customer’s business; reveal your customer’s true goals; and reveal underlying causes of your customer’s issue.
1) Become An Expert In Your Customer’s Business
Keenan argues that an effective salesperson must become an expert in their customer’s business. He advocates continuously asking “why” questions and following up to dig deeper into their business model, practices, and current situation. This will help you learn as much as you can about your customer’s gap.
2) Reveal Your Customer’s True Goals
Keenan emphasizes the importance of understanding a customer’s underlying motivations when making a sale. Your customer may present a clear short-term goal, but that’s only part of the picture. To truly assess the gap and the value your solution can provide, ask questions about the company’s long-term goals as well, such as about why a particular short-term goal is important, and how it fits into the company’s broader strategy.
For example, a manufacturing company expresses interest in buying new inventory management software. On the surface, their goal seems straightforward: to streamline their stock control process. However, by digging deeper and asking strategic questions, you reveal that this goal is part of a larger initiative to reduce operational costs by 20% over the next three years, in preparation for expanding into new markets. A more comprehensive software package would serve their inventory management needs as well as their overall efficiency goal.
3) Reveal the Underlying Causes of Your Customer’s Issue
Keenan suggests that it may not be enough to take your customer’s word at face value when they explain their issue. He encourages you to ask questions that may reveal the underlying causes. By addressing these causes, you can offer a more comprehensive and impactful solution. This not only benefits your customer, but increases the value of your offering and the potential size of the sale.
For example, a manufacturing company approaches a sales representative complaining of frequent production delays and seeking a more advanced scheduling system. By asking detailed questions, the sales representative discovers that the delays are due to a combination of factors: outdated machinery, inconsistent supplier deliveries, and high employee turnover. Instead of simply selling them a new scheduling system, the salesperson can now propose a broader holistic solution with products to address all of these issues.
Part 2: Making the Sale
Once you understand your customer’s gap, you can leverage that information to make the sale. According to Keenan, you can effectively sell your products and services by first evaluating the value that your solution will provide to your customer by closing the gap and then demonstrating that value. We’ll explore each of these parts below.
Step 1: Evaluate the Value of Your Solution
Once you’ve revealed your customer’s underlying issues and their long-term goals, you’ll be able to quantify how much value your solution offers them. Keenan explains that measuring the effect of the solution will indicate how much your product is worth to your customer. The greater the value you provide, the more enticing your solution will appear to your customer, and the more it will be worth. He recommends three steps to calculate the value of the solution: measuring the benefit you provide, measuring the cost to the customer, and weighing the two against one another.
1) Measure The Benefit
First, measure the value of closing the gap. Keenan advises calculating the specific differences between current state and ideal state using the key metrics that matter to the customer, such as revenue growth, close rates, or deal sizes.
Let’s say you’re selling a new customer relationship management (CRM) software to a mid-sized sales team. Through your discovery process, you’ve learned that their current system is outdated, causing inefficiencies and missed opportunities. To measure the effect of your solution, you might calculate:
- Time saved per salesperson per day (for example, one hour)
- Additional customer interactions made possible (for example, five more calls per day)
- Improved lead conversion rate (for example from 10% to 15%)
The cumulative value of each of these improvements is what you present as the value of your software.
2) Measure the Costs
Keenan also recommends that you consider the costs and effort the customer will have to make to implement your plan. These include not only the tangible upfront costs, but also intangible costs like implementation time, organizational disruption, training, and compatibility with their current practices.
In the example of the CRM software, you might want to consider factors such as:
- Software licensing fees (for example, $500 per user per year)
- Implementation costs (for example, $10,000 for initial setup and data migration)
- Training time (for example, two days of productivity lost per salesperson during onboarding)
- IT infrastructure upgrades (for example, $5,000 for additional server capacity)
- Potential temporary dip in productivity during the transition (for example, 10% reduction in sales for the first month)
3) Evaluate the Benefits Against the Costs
Finally, weigh the costs and benefits to your customer. If the benefits exceed the costs, then you’re offering the customer real value, and—as we’ll discuss in Step 3—you’ll work to demonstrate that value in your sale. If the costs exceed the benefits, then you’re unlikely to make a sale, and should refer the customer to someone else who may be able to help overcome their issues instead.
Step 2: Demonstrate the Value of Your Solution
Once you understand the value your proposition offers to your customer, you can effectively pitch your solution. It’s important to start with the understanding that customers only take a risk if they see an obvious benefit to themselves. Keenan explains: While many people claim to want change, most people actually oppose making changes and prefer the status quo because it’s more emotionally comfortable. Thus, your job as a salesperson is to show your customer why the change is worth it.
Keenan explains that you must focus your sale on demonstrating the value your proposition will provide by closing the gap. You’ve now thoroughly researched your client’s goals and issues and made a detailed cost-benefit analysis of your proposed solution. Your job now is to present your proposition in a way that highlights and showcases the specific value it provides to your specific client. Focus your pitch on concrete, measurable improvements that align with the customer’s goals and priorities.
Additional Tips
Keenan also offers three pieces of advice to guide you in your sales process: Remember that a sale is made up of little sales, establish yourself as an authority, and stand up to your customer.
1) A Sale Is a Process Made Up of Little Sales
Keenan explains that every sale is a process made up of little sales. Focus on obtaining the next incremental commitment from the customer to keep your deal moving forward, instead of fixating solely on the final close.
He breaks down the sales process: First, you need to sell someone on the idea of giving you their time. Then you need to sell them on answering your why questions to reveal their long-term goals and the underlying causes of their issue. You need to sell them on the idea of sharing data with you so that you can evaluate the value of the solution, and you need to sell them on the idea of listening to your pitch so you can demonstrate the value of your proposition. Only then can you actually make the final sale.
2) Establish Yourself as an Authority
Keenan recommends that salespeople establish themselves as knowledgeable consultants and valuable assets to their customers. He challenges the conventional wisdom that people buy from those they like. Instead, he argues, people buy from those who provide them value. Thus, focus on providing expertise and solutions rather than trying to be everyone’s friend. For instance, if you’re selling software, be able to discuss not just your product, but also industry trends, best practices, and how your solution fits into the broader technological landscape.
3) Stand Up to Your Customer
Keenan emphasizes the importance of maintaining a balanced partnership with customers throughout the sales process. He cautions against becoming subservient or readily agreeing to excessive demands. Instead, be prepared to stand your ground when necessary, clearly explain your rationale, and propose mutually beneficial compromises.
Furthermore, he encourages you to tactfully challenge your customer when they change their mind or offer reasons for backing out of a sale. He suggests framing your challenges with language like “I’m confused, I thought you said…” and “Could you explain to me why…” This maintains a tone of respect while forcing the customer to clarify and justify their position. Challenging the customer keeps the conversation open and provides an opportunity for you to continue convincing your customer of the value you can provide.
Part 3: Managing a Sales Team
Finally, Keenan offers his advice for applying the principles of gap selling to management of a team of sales representatives. He focuses on two strategies in particular: asking your sales representatives questions and keeping them accountable to sales targets.
Strategy #1: Frequently Ask Your Sales Representatives Questions (sales representative requirements)
To ensure that your sales representatives are putting gap selling principles into practice, Keenan recommends frequently asking them questions about their clients and about the state of the sale. He explains that gap selling requires a more thorough approach to tracking and managing your ongoing sales when compared to traditional techniques. He argues that asking questions allows you to verify your sales representatives’ knowledge while identifying gaps in their understanding of the sale. Furthermore, by asking about the sale, managers can support their sales representatives by providing strategies and ideas to guide them through the process.
He recommends that you focus your questions on two points: whether they understand their customers’ gaps and whether they know the next commitment to secure.
1) Do You Understand the Customer’s Gap?
In a gap selling pipeline review, Keenan advises sales managers to verify that their salespeople truly understand their customers’ gap. Recall that this requires a sales representative to fully understand their customer: their present condition, ideal future condition, underlying issues, and long-term goals. Furthermore, gap selling requires the sales representative to understand the value of closing the gap as well as the costs of implementing their solution. Keenan advises managers to ask for specific data from their sales reps and to ask follow-up questions to ensure that they’ve completed a thorough discovery and evaluation.
2) Do You Know the Next Commitment?
Recall that each sale is a series of incremental smaller sales. Keenan recommends that sales managers verify their representatives’ understanding of a sale by asking them about the customer’s next commitment. What is the next incremental step in the sales process that their customer must say yes to? Managers must make sure their sales reps have a clear short-term target in the sales process to keep the deal consistently moving along.
Strategy #2: Keep Your Sales Reps Accountable
Finally, Keenan explains that successfully managing a gap selling team requires ensuring that sales reps take responsibility for setting and hitting their sales targets. This will improve the predictability and accountability of your sales operations. He gives two pieces of advice for creating this shared culture of accountability: Reward honesty and base your predictions on data.
1) Reward Honesty
Keenan argues that successful sales managers reward their representatives for being honest when they’ll likely fall short of a target. He also cautions against pressuring representatives to change their commitments or find new leads when falling short. The goal is to establish a climate of trust where salespeople can share accurate pipeline information without fear of repercussions. This transparency will give you more accurate information about expected revenue, allowing you to address problems proactively and adjust sales strategies as needed.
2) Base Predictions on Data
Lastly, Keenan advises that you can improve the accountability of your sales team by calling on them to rely on data over gut feelings when making their sales projections. Your team can’t effectively anticipate future sales unless they’re drawing on clear and reliable information. Even if your sales representative has a “good feeling” about a deal, that doesn’t mean it will go through. Ask your team to incorporate prior closeout rates and other metrics when making their predictions.
