Buyers live in a system. It includes people, policies, relationships, company or family politics, personality issues, initiatives, historic vendor relationships, personal biases, fears. And any Identified Problem, or need, that our product can resolve, sits inside that system. And make no mistake: this Identified Problem sits comfortably in the buyer’s culture (their ‘system’).
When they go to resolve [...]

We all know that sales is a failed model; we’re good sellers and offer great customer service, our products are good, and our buyers have a need that we can fulfill. But we fail to close at least 90% of the time.
If it’s not us, not our product, and the need is obvious, what’s going [...]

My friend Jill Konrath returned from the recent Sales 2.0 conference and told me of a complaint she heard several times from attendees: “Customers don’t know how to buy.”
This, said by sellers blaming buyers for not behaving as sellers would prefer. Or not responding appropriately to seller’s selling patterns.
Let me reverse the issue: Sellers do [...]

You know your job, the characteristics of your market, and your product. You were hired in your latest company because of your experience – you’ve been selling your product line for some time with great results. No one has ever needed to teach you to sell because of your history of success. You do your [...]

When people or groups make a decision to purchase something, they go through the same decision cycle that an individual goes through to decide upon a personal change, or an employee goes through to change behaviors at a boss’s insistence.
Until now, our communication rules have assumed that when we kindly or persuasively offer others good [...]