The sales process is woefully inadequate. It merely focuses on the last 10% of the buying decision: the solution and vendor choice.
To understand and influence the buyer’s buying decision process and all of the people, politics and relationships that buyers must manage internally to be ready to make a purchase, it’s necessary for sellers to learn a new language. Not [...]

Sales has been around since the Serpent convinced Eve to eat the apple. And, unfortunately, the goals have remained pretty much the same ever since.
The sales model was designed for a different time in history, when there were fewer decision makers and products could be easily described in a magazine ad. With the advent of [...]

You’ve done your homework. You’ve found the right buyers – prospects with needs you can fulfill and can afford your solution. You’ve nurtured them, contacted them, met with them, scored them, pitched them, networked with them, sent them gifts. But only a small fraction buy.
Where do they go?
Industry lore believes that 80% of your prospects will purchase [...]

Sales people get confused when I suggest they can’t ’understand’ the buyer’s needs if they approach a sale with this outcome. Without everyone on board who will lend their voice to a possible solution, buyers cannot understand it themselves. And using the sales model, we can’t help: we’ll never understand what’s going on behind-the-scenes as they figure out who should be involved, what must be [...]

Around 85% of a buyer’s pre-purchase, back-end decision issues get addressed privately, outside of the seller’s purview, and a seller has no place at the table. Here is where we lose our sales – as buyers manage the internal politics, and the strategic/change issues – not because our solutions aren’t relevant or because we haven’t done a good job selling.
The [...]

When you think about your numbers (closing percentages, total calls, etc.), and consider the objections, the price issues, the delayed sales cycles, the excuses, and those who just, well, disappear, don’t you realize these same problems have been cropping up, um, forever? And that whatever you seem to be doing to ‘correct’ the issue doesn’t seem to [...]