The Sales Archaeologist

As you might imagine our conversations with people often end up being about ways that sales people or any customer facing people can do a better job when it comes to selling – identifying opportunities, qualifying them better, building a relationship quickly, understanding their needs and offering a solution that is relevant to those needs etc., etc. etc….

Many of the people we are attempting to help are already doing these things of course so we are usually looking for ways in which they can do these things differently and we are trying to establish where and what type of changes might result in the most R.O.I – different in every company of course.

That said when was the last time you looked at how you sell or how your people sell and said – let’s try doing something different!

Changing how you do things, mixing it up as it were is essential for a few reasons. First of all it keeps you alive and it keeps you fresh. Secondly you might find things that are more effective and finally – yes it makes you different to the buyer.

Robert E Lee used his Cavalry in a different way than his opponents on the Union Side, Napoleon used his Artillery training to manage Infantry differently and Einstein had to step outside of academia and visualize being on a train to help him explain his very different theory of relativity. Doing, thinking and being different can often lead to greatness and the same is true with sales.

Imagine that you are a prospect and 4 sales people are trying to sell to you. One has no process and simply presents information and delivers a proposal. Two are using the antiquated submarine method that makes you feel a little assaulted as they poke and prod to find your pain and although they might get you to answer questions and provide information and offer next steps – you feel no connection, there is no relationship and the idea of meta-phrasing and reversing your words is something you have read about and find it to be really rude. The last person seems to not be bound to a methodology, he listens and asks questions – many of these questions are ones that nobody else has asked. He seems to focus more on you than on the company or the solution and slowly he becomes a real advisor to you and your search.

Who do you pick?

Get the point – this might help give you some ideas on what you could change:-On-Demand Sales Development Webinar Series