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 [...]

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 [...]

Science, sales, negotiating, and the prison system – not to mention neuromarketing, neurosciences, and decision making sciences – have a base-line belief  that there is a ‘rational’ way to recognize choice -  rationality assumed when the ‘appropriate information’ is available to decide with.
In other words, when choices are made that go against what the world [...]

Depending on the selling approach you’re using, you are closing between .6% – 7% , regardless of size of solution or industry.
These numbers are far lower than they need to be: so long as your primary focus is on making a sale and you focus on needs assessment and solution choice (factors which are the buyer’s final considerations), and ignore the [...]

The steps of a buying decision differ from the steps of a sale. The sales model has no way to influence the private decisions and buy-in issues that buyers must address before they can buy.
Buyers live in a ‘system’ that maintains their Identified Problem (or ‘pain’)  over time, creating work-arounds that become part of the system [...]

This article has been selected for DeFinis Communications’ “Sales Coaching: Top Tips for Increased Productivity” Blog Carnival.
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 [...]