TheSalesAdvice: Selling Will Never Be The Same Again

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.

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. 

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?

Changing the way you sell requires changing your habits. Listen to some tips and hits on how to train your brain to do that. 

We cannot deny what buyers are really after; they miss information, and they want to verify their own information findings. If you cannot provide that service, buyers will go elsewhere. To stay ahead of your competition you need to ensure you help your stakeholders with their information challenge

The key to retention is continuously creating new value. Learn about three essential Loyalty Builders.

Research and situational knowledge are crucial to be prepared for any call. What is the next step to take your preparation to the next level?

Preparing a meeting in the new way of selling requires thinking like a customer; What would they like to discuss? What are they looking for in the meeting with you?

Listen to this story telling why salespeople, instead of focusing on closing the deal, are better off gaining small commitments from the buyer that lead to a bigger deal.

“How can you find insightful, valuable information while not being an expert in the prospect’s industry?” Find out how a simple exercise will get your customers'attention.

The thought process of – a separate Overcoming Objections step – is outdated and does not fit the new way of selling. Learn how to do this differently.

Listen to this episode about how to get a new customer to ship-to-profile and the analogy with hitting a home run.

Before you start selling, you have to create a problem worth solving. Help your prospect understand why they are not getting the results they are looking for.

Suppose your VP of Sales would task you to gain twelve new good quality customers in the next quarter. How would you go about that? What would be your plan? Where do you start? Who would you target? What is your approach? Listen to this episode to give you some great ideas.

Growth is a challenge for many business executives. Why? Because every business faces the same pressures. Listen to this episode to get some insights into how you can help your customers they may not have been thinking about.

There is a new term on the market: BUYER ENABLEMENT. Listen to this episode for marketers and sales to step up, and be ahead of the game by providing information that buyers cannot find by themselves and help them with making progress in their buying process.

In Sales, you come across discounting requests nearly every day. How do you handle these at the moment? When customers ask you to sharpen your pencil, what do you say? There is no magic bullet answer, but there are things to be aware of and consider not to do, and…there are more effective responses. An episode not to miss out on. 

How often did your manager ask you if you talked to the decision-maker during your last pipeline review? Your answer may vary from: ” All the time to Sometimes.” I challenge you today to reflect on the relevancy of this question in helping Sales Executives with closing deals.

Some salespeople dislike dealing with Procurement. Listen to this episode to see a different side of procurement and how you should change your approach.

Are you a Teller, a Giver or a Sense Maker? Buyers want to talk to someone who can help them with making sense of this mad world. Are you that person? 

Recognize the mistakes you make in your preparation, your opening, the value you offer, the stakeholders you talk to and the way you close. Then start improving.

Pandemic or no pandemic, the way buyers and sellers work has changed. Listen to the main eight drivers and challenge yourself to how well you have adapted to these.

For most people, the K.I.S.S acronym means to keep it simple, stupid. I have been using this in a different way, to help salespeople improve in the way they sell. Have a listen to this episode and how this may help you too.

We all have been there: your dream prospect doesn't call back. You are finding yourself (again) in a dead-end street. Turn conversations into strategic questions to get you out of the dead-end street.

How frustrating is it when you have ideas to move your dream prospect out of Why Change? – but you cannot get past the Gatekeeper? Listen to this episode for advice that works.

The new way of selling is not about you discovering something that can move you forward in your sales process. It is the opposite. Your sales process is broken.

To create the desire of buyers wanting to talk to salespeople is to make conversations super valuable again. Following a sales process designed in the 1990s leads to the opposite. A modern sales process needs:

• to make sense to us and the prospect
• to give you still control of the conversation
• while being aligned to the customer’s focus on their buying process

Listen to this episode on what needs to be fixed in your sales process.

Do not expect a magic trick or watertight scripts that make prospects stick to you like glue. Instead, be ready for hard work. The changes you need to make are more fundamental: Deep inside, you need to change 3 things.

It is natural for buyers to look at price, products, services and solutions and any combination of these four. They want the best value for their bucks. For you competing at that level may not get you the business. Instead, focus on helping customers with the right strategic outcome. That will be the game-changer.

Are you coaching “to close deals” or coaching “to help your sales teams get to the next commitment level”? Listen to this episode to learn how you can take pipeline coaching to a new level.