If you attempt to get meetings just to ‘get in front of’ a prospect (assuming that your solution will rule the day); if you present to whichever prospects will agree to see you; if you pitch when the buyer doesn’t have all of their ducks in a row, you’re not only wasting your breath, but potentially losing a sale.

Years ago I did a Buying Facilitation Method® program for a now-defunct group at KPMG. Before working with this team, they were using 2-4 people, spending between $500,000 and $1,000,000, and spending weeks creating large, glorious presentations to woo and wow the prospects as part of their proposal responses. They won 20% of the business.

Your solution matches the buyer’s need perfectly. You like them, they like you, you’ve had coffee/a meal/a powerful meeting or two. They talk about implementation and how they need to add your other product next year. And then they buy from someone else. Or not at all.
What happened? Are they stupid? Did they lie to [...]

1. Starting the sales process by attempting to get an appointment.
I know that Dale Carnegie told you to meet face-to-face. But what else are you doing that was initiated in 1937? Oh. That’s right. The typical sales model of focusing on solution placement.
Buyers only buy when their entire Buying Decision Team is on board and [...]

There are two distinct categories involving buying decisions: the behind-the-scenes issues buyers must manage internally to get stakeholder buy-in for change and for going outside their status quo for a solution and the solution-choice issues.
We are all very familiar with the latter: that’s what sales handles so well. But sales does not handle the former at all:

I’m here to tell you that cold calling can be one of the most effective ways to meet new prospects and close sales. And it’s a whole…