The fundamental challenge for most salespeople – the thing keeping them for achieving maximum results – is that they don’t know what would compel their buyers to move from no to yes. If they ever find out what would compel someone to buy from them, it’s often after the decision is made, and there’s nothing they can do about it. And this isn’t unique to deals they lose. They generally don’t know this information when they win either, but when they win nobody cares.
Tell me if you’ve heard this one. A salesperson walks into a buyer’s office…
If a salesperson walked into a buyer’s office and simply asked, “Would you like to buy from me today?”, there would only be three possible answers. Yes, no, and maybe. Here is an absolute, fundamental truth, there is always something, some set of characteristics or series of events that would compel the buyer to move from no to yes. There is always something! Unfortunately, VERY FEW salespeople have the knowledge, skill, and discipline to figure out what that is. Instead, they “pitch their wares” and hope what they pitch aligns with what the contact will buy.
Marketing often tries to address this by helping the salespeople get better at pitching the solution in a more compelling way. WRONG! While this broad approach is good marketing in that we are focusing on a message that resonates with a broader audience, it is terrible selling. In selling our people are working with an audience of one.
If we are going to get results that are above average, let alone great, we must reframe the job of the salesperson. Job #1 is to understand exactly what will compel the buyer to move from no to yes. That’s even more important than winning because winning without understanding isn’t repeatable and scalable.
When people know what will compel their contacts to choose one option over another, they:
- Waste less time on business they cannot win
- Win at a significantly higher rate
- Have more satisfied customers
- Are able to provide product marketing with meaningful information
The future of selling belongs to the people who do this best. At Axiom, we’ve helped develop some of the most effective sales teams in the country by equipping them to do this better than their competition.