Posts from — November 2006

For the past 12 years the Harvard Business Review has conducted an annual survey of chief sales officers-the executives in charge of their companies’ selling efforts. In their 2006 survey a very clear trend emerged. Across industries buyers are behaving differently and the work required of the sales organization is becoming more complex.

It appears from the survey results that the buyer’s cycle has dramatically diverged from the seller’s cycle. Buyers have always had a buying cycle, starting at the point they perceive a need. Sellers have always had a selling cycle, starting at the point they identify a prospect. It used to be that these two cycles were somewhat in synch.  Read more...

Learn to listen for specific clues as to how to best present information to new potential clients. By that I mean to listen for them to say, “I see what you mean,” or, “We look for ____ in a supplier” which usually means they relate best in a visual manner. Gear up your visual aids or computer graphics presentation for this person. Use lots of color, charts, photos, graphs, and diagrams.

For those people who say, “I hear what you’re saying,” you’d better gear your presentation to be more of an oral report. Be sure to include plenty of descriptive word pictures.  Read more...

The entire process of selling today is more complex than it has ever been before. It used to be that we would make a single call on a single buyer who would make a single decision on our product or offering.

In this simple form of selling, we used the attention/interest/ desire/action (AIDA) model of sales presentation and focused intensely on numerous different ways of closing the sale. Then, once we had made the sale, in many cases we never saw the customer again.  Read more...