The profile of a Trusted Advisor is different than what it was in the past for sales executives or account managers. It is a step up. Their skill set is more than selling.
A different view on who is talking more during a customer conversation. The customer or the salesperson?
Listen to surprising strategies for Stallen Opportunities based on research by Matt Dixon (The Challenger Sales author). His findings and recommendations are very aligned with the new way of selling. A podcast not to miss out on.
Keep prospects as long as possible on the right-hand side of the Buying clock. Then you are on their planet and increase the change to influence their buying process.
Whichever data or statistics you look at, it’s pretty clear that B2B buyers’ use of the web to make purchasing decisions is increasing exponentially. By the time you meet a prospect, they are halfway through their buying process, know exactly what they want, and ask you to put a price on their identified solution. Do buyers need a salesperson at all?
Sharing risks you see for your prospect of not changing is challenging for many salespeople. We have not been trained on how to do that. It’s time to get comfortable with the uncomfortable.
Here is a challenge for you. How do you handle situations where a prospect currently experiences dissatisfaction in one area, but according their thinking changing to you may lead to imperfection in another? They much prefer a fix over a change.
When opportunities stall, have you considered there is another competitor you are competing with? It’s The Hidden Competitor. Listen to this episode how to handle that.
Insight selling is about providing your stakeholder with a new perspective of their situation. However, there seems to be a lot of pressure on finding the right insight. What if there is not one big insight but instead several small insights? Welcome to the Domino-Insights Effect.
One of the most popular episodes on TheSalesAdvice. One of the challenges salespeople face with so many stakeholders involved in the buying process, is a buyer’s tendency to revert back to the status quo. How do you manage this challenge?
Why have we seen this decrease in selling time? Is the buyer’s trust in salespeople slowly but surely decreasing? Are we being dumped into the scepticism basket? Listen to how you need to fight back.
When coaching sales executives often, sales managers ask: “When do you think you can close the deal?”. In the new way of selling and in the new way of coaching, this is actually the wrong question. What would be a lot more helpful is asking, “What commitment did you get from your prospect at the end of your meeting?”. Gaining commitments is the new closing.
The buyer’s expectations of what salespeople should bring to meetings have changed. The magic wand has run out of magic.
Here is a scary question for you: Do buyers still need you? Are you out of your job soon? Listen to this episode to get your head straight. Of course, they do!
What buyers tell us, as salespeople, is: “Why don’t you start helping me with what we, as a business, focus on instead of torturing me to follow your sales process? Can you help me to be a disrupter?"
We need again to adapt to new needs from the buyers. They are better informed and say to salespersons: “Tell me something I don’t know.” Are you ready for the next step in selling?
When discussing possible solutions, buyers use their status quo as the reference point to evaluate the attractiveness of your offer. Any improvement is a gain, and any shortcoming is a loss. Is it really that simple? How are buyers really looking at competitive offers?
“No thanks, we are happy with our current supplier” is what many salespeople hear every day. Or you hear “thanks, but to make us switch, can you match our current supplier’s rates?” or any variation to this, including “give me a better price”. What is the cause of these statements, and how do you deal with them?
Like how the fax machine, email, iPhone, and FaceTime, arrived in an instant, in order to remain relevant and competitive, sales executives have to change the way they engage with their customers. And as always, early adopters will be the winners of tomorrow. The question remains, are you ready for virtual selling?
One of the most popular episodes of TheSalesAdvice podcast. This is a brain teaser and mind spinner. For decades salespeople have been successful with solution selling. That’s what we have grown up with. To remain relevant and inspirational to buyers (and survive and thrive again as salespeople) our sales approach needs to change. Selling from the Buyer’s Perspective is what customers require us to do.