TheSalesAdvice: Selling Will Never Be The Same Again

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.