Sales - The Process

Buyers only buy when they are willing to do something different from what they've been doing. What's keeping them where they are at? What are all of the elements that keep them doing what they've always been doing? Is it politics? People/relationships? Rules? Norms? Assumptions? Future plans? Your product has to not only fit in with all of the above, but potentially replace something. It will definitely cause some form of change.

What do you need to know or believe differently to be willing to stop pitching, stop pushing, stop presenting price as a reason to purchase, and basically stop selling?

What I continue to see is that your sales cycle ends up being at least 3 times longer than it should be across the board - regardless of size of sale or product; that you end up looking like your competition; that you end up spending too much time on the wrong prospects; that you don't know how to move sales along; that you don't know how to support potential prospects in getting appropriate buy-in; that you don't understand that it's pretty much never about price???? Not to mention that the best of sales folks waste at least 90% of their time on prospects that don't close.

And sales - the very act of selling - creates the objections and time delays and loss of differentiation that you are experiencing. Why do you keep using that process? And why is a 90% time wastage ok?

- Sharon Drew