Is Your Selling Approach Hurting Your Sales Deals?

It’s no secret that before the internet, selling was a much different process than it is now. However, it might surprise you that 7 out of the 8 leading sales training programs used today were designed prior to the internet, personal computers, and cell phones. What’s this mean? Thousands of companies spend too much money every year on outdated sales training programs that teach salespeople to sell in a way that is directly opposite to how decisions are made.

How are Sales Decisions Made, Then?

First, you have to realize one key thing; you aren’t selling to a person. You’re selling to a brain. While a brain is a complex organ, in truth, it only does two things when presented with information: moves toward or away from stimuli. Presenting information in a way that shows your prospect that they have a problem or pain that needs to be solved helps creative an emotional trigger that will be used to drive their buying decision.

Aligning Your Messaging

Furthermore, ensuring your messaging is the same across the board is essential. Creating this aligned messaging will help you sell, recruit, and communicate your company’s unique value. Your company’s story should be able to be told quickly, simply, and concisely and should be present on your website.

Dictionary of Scary New Sales Terms: What They Mean for You (3/3)

So far you’ve learned about how commoditization is threatening your sales and how this can often lead to indecision or reprioritization. You’ve learned that to combat both, you’ll need to align your messaging and salespeople to convey your unique value and to communicate how you’ll solve your prospect’s pains.

Consensus Decision Making

The February 1, 2016 issue of Fortune Magazine contained a really interesting article, called “The Hard Evidence: Business Is Slowing Down”.  What it recaps is that as fast moving as the world has become, ironically enough, the time it takes one company to sell to another has slowed down by 22% over the last five years. The reason? In the past you worked with 1 or 2 folks through the buying cycle and you have to contend with 5 + decision makers!

This team of 5+ prospects is the new reality in consensus decision making and these folks are doing their research in advance.  They’ll even think they know what they “need” before you ever get a chance to speak to them. In fact, up to 70% of the buying journey is complete before a salesperson enters the picture. And here’s the real challenging part: you have to sway each and every decision maker to such a degree that they not only agree they have a pain that needs to be solved, but that they select you and your solution. On top of all of this, your portrayal of the pain and your unique solution has to be conveyed strongly enough so that the prospect doesn’t delay and ultimately moves on to another priority.

Wrap Up – How to Solve the Problems These Three Terms Create:

How do I use these three terms to your advantage?

  1. Your entire team can quickly and convincingly attack the pains your prospects have at a subconscious level and communicate persuasively how you’re uniquely positioned to solve them.
  2. You create a presentation/pitch that easily separates you from your competition and drives the right amount of emotional lift through eye-catching visuals and concise content.
  3. Your team should be trained to succeed in a pitch or persuasion-based world.  We’ve moved on from a manipulation-based world and now have to quickly and persuasively pitch up to 3 times before we get prospects to truly open up.

 

Dictionary of Scary New Sales Terms: What They Mean for You (2/3)

If you followed our last segment on emerging sales terms, you learned how important commoditization is and why it is imperative for your brand to stand out as a solution to your prospect’s pains. Today, we’re going to look at what happens when you don’t market yourself as a solution, and show why the internet has made indecision increasingly more common.

(re)Prioritization

Your prospect has many different challenges and priorities flying at them from all different directions, often at the same time. While they may not be completely aware of it, their brains are continually seeking to eliminate the most urgent pain facing them. It’s basic neuromarketing; if your prospect becomes aware that they are dealing with a threat, they want to find a solution to get rid of it.

Yet, 6 out of 10 times you’ll lose your sales deal to no decision, which means the prospect moves on without eliminating their pain. Why? Well, either the pain isn’t strong enough or their brain moved on to focus on a more pressing pain. The real problem here is that your messaging and salespeople did not effectively communicate to the prospect. In order to beat indecision, you’ll need to surface the pain so it is present and felt by your prospect.

Of course, there’s one other reason you could have lost to indecision;  delay crept in. And we all know what delay does to deals: it kills them and our last scary sales term will explain why…

 

Dictionary of Scary New Sales Terms: What They Mean for You (1/3)

As technology continues to advance, new sales terms and definitions begin to emerge, impacting the way you do business. We’ll be covering three separate segments of three new, threatening sales terms, how they’re killing or slowing your deals, and what you can do about them. Check out our first sales term below:

Commoditization

Blame the Internet, blame your salespeople, or even blame the marketplace, but the real culprit here is your prospect’s brain doing everything it can to simplify their decision.  You see, when all things appear equal it makes it very easy to just use price as the deciding factor.  And unless you’re Walmart or Amazon, you’ve already lost!  Walmart even has an app that assures you will always pay the lowest price; you scan your receipt and if there’s ever a lower price, you get the credit back!

As the line between life in business and life as a consumer continues to blur, and the ability to look up all competitors in your space instantly increases, commoditization becomes an even tougher challenge.

How do you beat commoditization? Is it even possible? To start, you have to quickly and persuasively demonstrate what’s different about you.  The real challenge here is to clearly articulate how you stand out and then connect your unique value as a means of eliminating your prospect’s threats, pains and fears. Once the prospect is aware they have a problem, they’re going to want to solve it, and that’s where you come in.

Why do you have to go to this extreme?  Because in most cases (6 out of 10 times) your going to lose to “no decision” or (re)Prioritization to be discussed in our next segment.

Do You Ever Wonder Why it Takes So Long to Close Deals?

The beginning stages of a sales deal has evolved rapidly since the Internet began taking over much of our business and e-commerce. And while the world is moving faster and faster, what’s ironic is that deals are taking longer to close than ever before, and many get lost along the way to indecision.

As we all know, time does one thing to sales deals – it kills them.

According to a 2016 Fortune magazine article, the time it takes for one company to sell to another has increased by 22% since 2011. Closing deals is taking longer, and thus, leading to less sales and many lost sales along the way.

Why is it Taking So Long to Close Deals?

In the past, a deal only had to be approved by one or two buyers. If you happened to know someone in the company, you could pitch to them and that relationship would be key in determining if you made the sale or not. Now, however, sales must now be approved by five or more “buyers”, making the process lengthier and more challenging, and making it much easier for one buyer to hesitate or reject the deal, bringing the entire process to a standstill.

What’s worse is that most companies aren’t prepared to counter this and lack a cohesive and persuasive selling message that appeals to each buyer. If any were to ask “Why you?” can your sales team respond in a way that differentiates you and is persuasive enough?

What Can You Do About it?

Speeding up deals is very possible, with the right tools. A buyer needs to be able to take one look at your company and quickly understand the answers to their main question: why you? Your unique company marketing message needs to be aligned throughout your company, all the way from your CEO to your sales team. Creating and understanding this cohesive message will instantly allow buyers to understand what they will receive by choosing you.