Keenan’s Gap Selling Versus CRO School: Adem Manderovic & George Coudounaris

In today’s competitive market, sales and marketing strategies need to be as effective as they are dynamic. Two standout programs, Keenan’s Gap Selling and the Full Funnel MBA style from CRO School, each bring distinct approaches to the table, but can work synergistically for a complete revenue strategy.

Overview of Each Approach:

Keenan’s Gap Selling

Gap Selling is a customer-centric approach that redefines traditional sales strategies by focusing on diagnosing the “gap” between a buyer’s current state and their desired future state. Keenan argues that by deeply understanding and addressing the customer’s core issues, sales professionals can build trust and credibility. This method advocates for a thorough discovery process, aimed at identifying the customer’s pain points and aligning them with the solutions offered. The result? A problem-centric sale that goes beyond surface-level pitches and digs into the real business needs of clients .

CRO School’s Full Funnel MBA Style Program

CRO School takes a holistic approach, integrating sales, marketing, and customer success into a unified revenue model. This program emphasizes “closed circuit selling,” where marketing and sales efforts are tightly linked with customer onboarding, retention, and expansion. By treating the entire customer journey as a seamless “funnel,” CRO School ensures that no part of the process is siloed — marketing fuels sales, sales ensures alignment with client needs, and customer success maximizes long-term value. This comprehensive framework aims to boost acquisition, prevent churn, and create sustainable growth through demand generation and end-to-end revenue alignment .

Comparison by Key Elements:

1. Sales Philosophy

• Gap Selling: Gap Selling prioritizes understanding the buyer’s challenges in-depth and uses that information to drive a consultative, solution-oriented sale. This approach is especially useful in industries with complex buyer needs, where customers need help identifying issues they may not fully understand or know how to solve.

• CRO School : values understanding customer needs, it focuses on building a seamless connection across the entire customer journey. This is beneficial for companies seeking consistent messaging from initial marketing through post-sale, where each step is aimed at driving customer lifetime value.

2. Target Audience

• Gap Selling: Ideal for companies that rely on high-stakes, relationship-driven sales, such as B2B enterprises, where in-depth discovery and consultative approaches are critical. This approach is also valuable for companies with complex or customizable offerings, where solution alignment is a top priority.

• CRO School: Suited for businesses aiming to scale through coordinated, data-driven sales and marketing efforts, particularly in sectors where customer retention and expansion are critical. CRO School benefits organizations that want to align marketing, sales, and customer success teams, as it establishes clear frameworks for each stage of the customer journey .

3. Methodology and Process

• Gap Selling: Gap Selling is structured around diagnostic sales techniques, where the salesperson becomes a problem-solver. Through deep questioning and active listening, sales reps uncover and address the “gap” in the buyer’s current situation. Keenan emphasizes the importance of reframing objections as opportunities to better understand the customer’s pain points

• CRO School: implements closed-circuit selling, which synchronizes demand generation with conversion, retention, and growth stages. This methodology ensures no drop-offs between marketing and sales, with frameworks like onboarding checklists, expansion opportunity identification, and churn prevention tools embedded in the process. This closed-loop approach enables teams to understand how each function supports the entire sales cycle, from lead to loyal customer .

4. Core Strengths

• Gap Selling: Effective in situations requiring a strong understanding of complex buyer needs. It builds trust through a collaborative approach, showing customers that the sales rep is invested in solving their unique problems.

• CRO School: This program’s strength lies in creating alignment across marketing, sales, and customer success. By ensuring seamless communication between these functions, CRO School is especially effective for companies looking to streamline operations and drive sustained revenue across the entire customer lifecycle.

5. Key Benefits and Industry Fit

• Gap Selling: Best suited for industries with highly customizable products and services, where buyers often need assistance in identifying what’s necessary to achieve their business goals. This includes fields like SaaS, consulting, and specialized B2B services.

• CRO School: Ideal for industries where customer retention and lifetime value are essential. Sectors like tech, B2B SaaS, and enterprise sales benefit from CRO School’s focus on end-to-end integration, aligning acquisition with retention to fuel long-term growth.

Combining Gap Selling with the CRO School for Maximum Impact

For companies aiming to maximize revenue, the synergy between Gap Selling and the CRO School can provide a full-spectrum approach.

1. Diagnose Deeply, Then Deliver Seamlessly: Use Gap Selling’s problem-diagnosis framework to deeply understand customer pain points and provide tailored solutions. Then, leverage the CRO School’s closed-circuit selling to ensure consistent engagement across marketing, sales, and customer success, preventing potential gaps in post-sale processes.

2. From Transactional to Relational Selling: While Gap Selling helps transform sales from a transaction to a consultative relationship, the Full CRO School reinforces this by ensuring that the relationship is nurtured and supported throughout the customer’s lifecycle.

3. Scalable and Sustainable Growth: The diagnostic power of Gap Selling combined with the CRO School’s operational alignment promotes growth that is both scalable and sustainable. This combined model is ideal for organizations wanting to achieve long-term revenue goals without sacrificing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

In today’s competitive market, understanding customer needs is only one part of the puzzle. Integrating sales, marketing, and customer success through a structured full-funnel approach ensures that companies not only win deals but retain and grow their client base. By combining Gap Selling’s problem-centric philosophy with the CRO School comprehensive alignment, companies across industries can drive meaningful and sustainable growth.

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