Gap Selling Template
Maximize your sales potential with gap selling techniques – design a compelling, clear, and solution-focused approach to win clients.
About this template
Connect with buyers in a meaningful way with our Gap Selling template and quickly determine their current state problems, future desired state, and business objectives. Our interactive Gap Selling template will help your sales representatives close more deals and shift the focus on the client, making them feel heard.
What's included?
- Executive summary following the gap selling framework
- Product value prop
- Product value section
- Interactive pricing
- Team information
- Customer testimonials
- Acceptance of terms
- Contact us information
About the author
Tania Clarke|Head of Product Marketing
Tania heads up product marketing at Qwilr – looking after positioning, sales enablement, competitor intelligence and more. Tania brings experience from former roles at high growth startups like Atlassian and Safety Culture.
Gap Selling is a problem-centric sales methodology created by Keenan, CEO and president of A Sales Growth Company, aimed at identifying a lead’s present status before progressively moving them towards their ideal future state. Sales representatives begin by discussing a client’s current needs through Gap Selling discovery questions (i.e. probing, provoking, and validating questions).
Once the lead’s current state problems have been discussed, sales teams can then offer their products and services. The Gap Selling methodology is ultimately designed to shift the focus of the sale from your products and services to the buyer’s problem.
This sales methodology is effective at establishing a client’s needs, assisting clients in closing the gaps between their current and desired future state. In this context, the "gap" refers to the distance between your prospect’s current situation and their envisioned future state. With custom proposal software, this methodology can be seamlessly integrated into your sales process, ensuring tailored solutions that bridge these gaps effectively.
Gap Selling is best used for B2B businesses that require solutions to complex problems. This sales methodology provides a clear framework for sales representatives to operate within, ensuring they fully understand a client’s needs before helping them close competitive gaps.
It’s also particularly suited for businesses that are struggling to connect with prospects, helping sales representatives gain a deeper understanding of a potential client’s business objectives before offering their products or services.
Gap Selling differs from commonly-used sales methodologies including, SPIN Selling, Solution Selling, and the Challenger Sales methodology, opting for a more problem-centric approach rather than product-centric one.
The Gap Selling methodology allows your sales representatives to focus entirely on the client, uncovering their potential needs. Gap Selling ultimately empowers your business to forge meaningful relationships with clients built on credibility and trust, streamlining the sales cycle. While the Gap Selling methodology takes time to master, it is a great way to bridge gaps your prospect might not even be aware exist.
With Qwilr’s Gap Selling template, sales representatives can create mobile-friendly, interactive documents that clearly highlight a lead’s current state, impact, and desired future state. Our Gap Selling template will not only help your team position its products and services to prospects that need them most, but can also be used to simplify the Gap Selling methodology for your sales representatives.
Here's a quick video overview of how to get started with this template:
Our Gap Selling template will ensure your sales representatives have everything they need to understand a potential lead’s current and future state and position your products and services accordingly. You can also book a demo if you are looking to get started with Qwilr!
- Create an easy-to-follow framework that outlines the current state, impact, and desired future state.
- Align multiple stakeholders within one, mobile-friendly and interactive document.
- Monitor buyer engagement and track every click through Qwilr analytics
- Identify Gap Selling discovery questions to determine your lead’s current and future state
- Empower your sales team to easily identify the gap and position your products and services
- Focus sales conversations on leads with a “wider gap” (i.e. higher motivation to buy)
- Simplify the buying experience by organizing all pertinent information in one interactive document
- Ability to embed further sales collateral, like videos or spreadsheets – avoid attachments and links getting lost in email chains.
- Guide buyers through the sales process
- Embed security and compliance information for a safe, streamlined, and reliable sales process
A tool packed with features
Brand control
Establish your brand settings once and automatically apply to every piece of collateral.
Payments
Collect payments instantly from customers with Stripe or direct to your own payment system.
Security & GDPR
Add security features like password protection and link expiry to protect sensitive content.
Embedded content
Add Calendly links, videos, surveys, Looms, GIFs and more to every page.
E-signature
Get deals signed on the spot with built-in e-signing ability.
Asset library
Create a library of reusable content for sales reps.
ROI calculator
Showcase your value with an interactive ROI calculator embedded in your Qwilr pages.
Team management
Set up permissions so your team accesses only what they need.
Interactive pricing
Empower buyers with interactive pricing plans and quotes.
Templates for every use case
Explore templates for sales, marketing, customer success, sales enablement and more.
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Frequently asked questions
The Gap Selling methodology ensures sales representatives gain a full scope of a prospect’s problem before identifying the gap they need to address. Simply put, this sales methodology empowers sales teams to win more business by helping clients reach their future desired state.
The Gap Selling methodology is designed to shift the primary focus of the discussion from your products and services to the problems the buyer is facing. This ultimately allows sales representatives to build meaningful relationships with prospects before offering their products or services. While Gap Selling may be more time-consuming than traditional sales techniques such as BANT, it is best suited for solving complex problems B2B clients tend to face.
According to Keenan, there are five elements a sales representative must consider to fully understand a client’s current situation: environment, problem, impact, root cause, and emotion. Only by understanding a client’s current state can a sales representative successfully determine their desired future state, helping them close any gaps that exist. Here is a brief overview on each element of a prospect’s current state:
Environment: Where is the buyer based and what is their environment like?
Problem: What problem are they trying to solve?
Impact: What impact are these problems having on the buyer’s business?
Root Cause: What are the fundamental issues that result in this problem occurring?
Emotion: Is there current state affecting their emotions?
Whether the Gap Selling methodology is the right sales technique for your team will ultimately depend on your industry. The Gap Selling methodology is primarily geared towards offering solutions to complex problems for B2B businesses. This sales methodology, however, is not ideal for transactional sales and retail businesses, where time is of the essence.
The Gap Selling methodology requires your sales representatives to spend significant time in discovery mode asking probing, provoking, or validating questions. As such, Gap Selling is typically recommended to businesses that offer products and services that don’t have a standard solution.
Sales representatives must ask a series of Gap Selling discovery questions to better understand their client’s current state and desired future state. Typically, there are four types of Gap Selling discovery questions: Probing, provoking, process, and validating questions. Here are some of the most commonly-asked Gap Selling discovery questions.
Probing
- Tell me about your company.
- How would you describe the problem you’re facing?
Process
- Can you help me understand how your company currently does this?
- What timeline did you have in mind?
Provoking
- What are you hoping to achieve?
- What kind of impact is this problem having on your business?
- What’s currently holding you back from reaching your goals?
Validating
- If I understand correctly, this problem is the main issue. Am I correct?
- Last time we spoke, your biggest challenge was (problem). Is this still true today?
The Gap Selling methodology differs from other sales techniques in that it is problem-centric rather than product-centric. Unlike other sales methodologies, including SPIN and Solution Selling, the Gap Selling methodology centers the entire sales cycle around the impact of a buyer’s current state problems.
Sales representatives can then shift the focus on determining the client’s future desired state before positioning their products or services. The wider the “gap” between the client’s current state and future desired state, the higher their motivation will be to close the deal.