Tuesday night I was asked about what I teach when I am doing sales training. I said that the one foundation to sales is emotion. People buy to get rid of pain most of the time. A small portion of the time they buy for pleasure. Think about it: Groceries, baby food, medical bills, car repairs, home repairs, tuition - versus spending on vacation or shoes.
People mainly buy on emotion, then justify it after. Ever hear of buyer's remorse? That is when the emotion dissipates and they go, "Why did I buy that?"
The sales person has to like and believe in what they sell. If not, sales will be a struggle.
Sales people have to have the customer's best interest at heart -- it has to be about the customer's pain and gain, not your quota or that you have to turn this prospect into money.
Hence, why I started with Hugh MacLeod's cartoon about Any fool can sell.
There is a good article here about why many sales people will be gone soon. One reason is that the entire sales process for so many things has changed. People are more informed now. They can Google everything, including reviews and pricing - even from their smartphone while talking to you!! That means everything is a commodity. It's all comparison shopping. The sales people will just be answering questions in defense and objection rebuttal mode and being quote jockeys. That will suck!! For everyone!
XO's CMO talks about Customer Intimacy and how XO re-branded. He's right about "a balance from a marketing and product development". He's also right about "an effective and efficient sales force is the Holy Grail." What constitutes that kind of sales force is up in the air.
It's not enough to get feet on the street. You can have 4000 agents knocking on doors for your product but none of those doors may be the right prospect or ready to buy or want to buy it that way or a number of other sales disrupting factors.
It's about having a product that has a defined target audience and a story to tell about it. That story is the value, the benefit, the relevance.
Next you have to have a sales force that is engaged, knowledgeable, trained, enthused, and good at relationships.
In this hour long presentation on Challenger sales, the new sales force has to be creative. The sales force has to be selling, not just solutions based on your company's services, but how your solution (and services) is going to benefit the business, add value, produce measurable outcomes.
Something to think about. Otherwise, sell on price (and deal with a shrinking margin) and spend a lot on SEO (with a declining amount of money).
BTW, the Sales Fools in this case aren't the salespeople but the sales managers, directors and VPs that think sales is the same and can't define the targets, triggers and value propositions. The fools think that training the sales force is a waste of dollars.
