I often tell people I love selling, but hate sales. Typically followed by a strange look. Comments like, "it's a numbers game," "you need to make your dials" and "we need 3x pipeline" is all sales, NOT selling. Selling is an art form which requires critical thinking, effective communication and the ability to leverage emotional intelligence to influence another individual. When we simple boil sales down to a forecast and inputs into CRM, it makes it seems like volume in will equal a positive outcome. The downside to "sales" is that reps are not getting coached and trained to think critically, carve our time to make meaningful connections and REALLY learn what they are selling. It's not about your product, it's about a feeling and the problems you solve. If we spent have as much time teaching how to have real business conversations as we do forecasting, I promise the results will be better. Love it / hate it? #sales
Very interesting point of view.? I do agree that it is not about selling but about a problem that needs to be solved. A feeling of being stuck in point A and wanting to get to B.? The role of the closer is to listen with intent, clarify the needs while building report and relatinship and bridging the gap between the current situation and the desired one. It's a people business. People that try to use tactics and schemes to shortcut their way to the sale won't get far on the long run. They will fail. Thank you for sharing this.
Agree but unfortunately in many organisation people tend to focus more on "sales" to meet their quarterly, half year and yearly targets while do not really understand the product/services deeply so it becomes difficult for most of the people to tweak the services and make them really suit the customers. I think we are battling with the short term goal that everyone is trying to meet though.
Completely agree. You should use the numbers (specifically efficiency metrics across the entire funnel) to shape/pinpoint where you coach a rep, not just blindly insist for more volume. You can make all the dials in the world, but if you struggle getting past a gatekeeper or having a meaningful first conversation with a DM, then it doesn’t matter. Same as you get farther down the funnel - doesn’t matter how many demos you set it you can’t get them to show or can’t uncover their pain points or communicate value or strategically close.
If you company isn't teaching you these things, where can someone get the knowledge? Are there any resources someone recommends?
Interesting post
Josh Wagner that's because we focus too much in the short term result than long term. No one is patient ,we as salesman, management or even the customer . How much time we actually spend to build a relationship ? I have customers with whom I m working for more than 5 years. But few customers only work once . The difference I noticed is conversation n trust. In the first category, customers n us are one n consider ourselves partners . Unfortunately in 2nd part we are competitors and we only talk price !!
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4 年Enjoying the post and the comments! ?? Devina Kaur?? ~ SEXY BRILLIANT??