No Pain, No Change = No Sale

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Sales Skills, Sales Tips

Recently I wrote about wanting to tell clients what to do and why we couldn’t even if we know better. The premise was that what may seem so obvious to us may not be obvious to the client or on their agenda at all.

Why? Simply put, if the client or prospect does not perceive or admit to having an issue, a problem, a challenge, some difficulty they want to overcome, or even an opportunity they want to ignite then they will not perceive the need to change what they are doing now.

And even if they can see …

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Why I want to tell you what to do, but I won’t, even if I know better

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Skills, Sales Tips

We’ve all been there

How many times do we want to tell our clients what to do?

After only a few sentences uttered by them we, of course, know immediately what their issue is. We’ve seen it 10s or 100s of times before. It seems so obvious to us what they should do.

“If only they would just do this… it would be so much better/ save them so much time/ get them there faster/ make them safer, etc.” I hear you cry.

Welcome to the world of domain expertise when you (potentially) know a lot more about something than someone else does. It …

Why I want to tell you what to do, but I won’t, even if I know better Read Post »

Solution versus Product Selling

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, Sales Skills, Sales Strategy, Sales Tips, Solution Selling

Today it is almost impossible to meet a product salesperson in the business-to-business sector. Everyone sells ‘solutions’ hoping they can charge a premium or perform some miracle that will instantly differentiate them from their competitors.

And management – often ignorant of the subtle differences between selling products or services and selling solutions – become frustrated when they find that the expected boom in sales doesn’t materialise; that their salespeople continue to face pressure for lower prices, better service delivery and a wider range of offerings.

The challenge is understanding what selling a solution requires. The real starting point, for a truly solutions …

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Getting prospects to talk to you

By / / Call Reluctance, Education in Sales, Prospecting, Sales Skills, Sales Tips

Do you take time to really think about why you are calling a prospect or a client?  Do you reflect on how effective you have been post the call?

Making prospecting calls to new prospects and existing clients is still one of the most important sales and business development activities you can do on a daily basis.  Even with all the electronic communication and marketing options at hand most businesses still need to have someone prospecting for them to build and forge real business relationships. Top performing salespeople make sure prospecting is part of their daily repertoire.

Prospecting …

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The difference between Cheap & Frugal Customers & how to deal with them

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Education in Sales, Sales Skills, Sales Tips

Today, many clients whether they are B2B (business) or B2C (consumer) are looking to save money. Why? Times are uncertain, markets and demographics are shifting, there is a wide variety of choice, and it’s much easier for buyers to make product comparisons and compare prices. It is said that we are currently under the influence of a buyer’s market, and some buyers can and do drive a hard bargain.

At the same time, businesses are seeing their margins eroding so they’re putting more pressure on their salespeople to hold their margins and deliver value. That’s not always easy, especially if we …

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Sales Trend 6 – The Sales Curator™

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Complex Selling & Transactional Selling, Sales Skills, Sales Trends

Sales Trend 6 from the Barrett 12 Sales Trends for 2016 Report is ‘The Sales Curator™’.

A new sales capability is required in this information overloaded world. No longer are salespeople seen as the purveyors of information they once were in the 20th century, 21st century salespeople now need to be experts at sifting and sorting information for their clients and prospects.

They need to have in-depth knowledge about what they are selling, how it fits into a system, how it affects their clients and what is and isn’t relevant to each client situation. Like an expert museum …

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Why everybody benefits from knowing how to prospect

By / / Communication, Education in Sales, Prospecting, Sales Skills

Every business needs to prospect for new clients and customers, even non salespeople often need to reignite past business relationships and form new ones, internally or externally. You don’t need to be the primary salesperson or business development manager to be required to prospect well. Any call you make to another person whose attention you need to grab and focus on what you have to offer or propose is technically a prospecting call.

Prospecting is the identification and pursuit of new opportunities.

In sales, it is the pursuit of new business opportunities in either new or existing accounts.

In other …

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Does your sales force match what you are selling?

By / / Sales Results, Sales Skills, Sales Talent

One size does not fit all when it comes to building the right type of sales force for what you are selling; yet many professionals treat selling as a homogeneous skill set, expecting salespeople to be able to sell anything.

Or another fatal mistake is to assume that industry experience and knowledge alone is all that is required. For too many years sales managers have had industry experience as their number one selection criteria for salespeople. The problem with this is that they usually get the same old people with the same old ideas and the same old results.

The fact is …

Does your sales force match what you are selling? Read Post »

Survival of the Adaptive P2: Develop a well-informed sales force

By / / Attitudes & Behaviours, Business Acumen, Sales Leadership, Sales Skills, Sales Talent

This series of ‘Survival of the Adaptive’ articles will look at the key things we need to do as sales teams to contend with the many changes afoot in our 21st century world and market place.

Part 2 is all about developing a well-informed sales force

A decade ago, when traditional product-pushing sales were all that mattered, most sales leaders employed and trained well motivated salespeople – usually with what they referred to as “industry experience”. Today that is hardly enough!

Many of these sales leaders now confess to being less certain that industry experience or having …

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Making Persuasive Sales Presentations

By / / Communication, Sales Presentation & Grooming, Sales Skills

How persuasive are you?

Persuasiveness is the power to induce the taking of a course of action or the embracing of a point of view by means of argument or entreaty.

One of the mistakes salespeople make when doing sales presentations is their tendency to be more informative than persuasive. That difference is costing companies millions of dollars a year in lost sales opportunities. The reason for this is simple. It’s far easier to dispense information than it is to interact with an audience (buyers, stakeholders, etc.) and try and persuade someone to make a commitment to our offer. As a result many sales professionals linger …

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