Whiteboard Selling is an excellent go-to-market sales strategy when compared to the traditional corporate sales deck. Whiteboard Selling offers a step-by-step approach to transform corporate messaging to a unique selling proposition and selling style using powerful visual stories that inspire and engage customers and prospects. Whiteboard Selling empowers B2B sales forces by providing the knowledge, insights and storytelling methodology that frees them from relying on PowerPoint slides and a corresponding script. Whiteboard Selling is designed to synchronize sales and marketing teams to quickly adopt and integrate visual storytelling practices into their go-to-market sales strategies.
To get started with Whiteboard Selling, sales and marketing teams will need to:
- Take a sales message inventory
- Learn how to design visual stories
- Learn to tell the story and extend the reach of visual storytelling
Before the team can create and deliver effective presentations that engage customers, hold their attention, and win their business, some vital information must be pulled together. Specifically, the Whiteboard Selling process is facilitated when sales and marketing teams come together with:
- A definition of the target market including a detailed use case
- A brief overview of approach/products/services – not a sales pitch but business problems and business outcomes
- A list of competitors and the unique, comparative and holistic differentiation
- The company’s unique selling proposition
- History about the company (years in business, size, growth, revenue model, percentage training, vs. consulting, vs product sales, etc.)
- Business model and financial goals
- Marketing approach
- Deployment of technology-enabled learning and selling
- Several brief examples with quantified client results
- Current opportunities and challenges
Whiteboard Selling – Solving Problems with Images and Interactive Dialogue
The Whiteboard Selling process yields a number of deliverables. It also answers key questions like:
- How to package the whiteboard so the sales team can digest it
- How to deliver the material so knowledge is actually transferred
- How to drive adoption in the field so that sales reps use it every day and on every deal
Specifically, after successfully completing a Whiteboard Selling exercise, sales teams will know:
- What to draw
- What to say
- What to ask
- How to make transitions
- How to pivot to make the discussion interactive
At the heart of Whiteboard Selling is a Playbook – a digital sales conversation guide for the white board. The Playbook includes:
- Steps (images and video)
- Talking points
- Questions to ask
- Transition
If a B2B sales organization is struggling to meet quota, the following issues relayed by sales reps will sound familiar:
- It’s hard to clearly communicate the business issues and insights
- We are ineffective in communicating the differentiation
- There is not a managed, repeatable process so that all reps are following the optimized sales process to qualify and convert a qualified opportunity
If this is the case, then it may be time to embrace Whiteboard Selling to:
- Connect at an emotional level with prospects
- Catalyze action
- Lead the prospect to the company’s unique differentiators and
- Produce the desired business outcomes
Whiteboard Selling provides a creative atmosphere that enables an informal, conceptual conversation with a prospect or customer. It is not a sales pitch but a process based on proactive dialogue from both parties.