The sales model has taught you to uncover needs – to really, really understand needs – so  you recognize who is a good prospect and know the right way to pitch to that person. You finely hone your probing and questioning skills. You learn to hear a need from a mile off. You teach your staff to have great care […]

Until now, you’ve called yourselves relationship managers because you believe that by giving clients and prospects good service, advice, ideas, and professional behaviors you would prove yourselves worthy of being the chosen vendor. In other words, you’ve been using the title as a sales ploy.
But you all sound alike: No matter how terrific you are, […]

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 I hear sellers say that buyers have ‘pain’ I ask how long it would take them to get to the hospital with a broken arm. “Immediately.”  Why? Because they’re in pain. But buyers don’t buy ‘immediately’ and have had their problem for a period of time.
If your buyer had pain, they would have fixed the problem […]

You get paid based on closed sales. Fortunately, you don’t get paid on the % of sales you don’t close.
But actually, that is exactly what happens: you are missing income on the sales you aren’t closing. But if you based your efforts on the buyer’s decision paths rather than your solution, you can be closing a helluva lot more sales.
THE COST OF […]

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 […]