Weary Buyers Warn Sellers: The Game is Up!
Salespeople and their Wily Ways! Buyer beware was the dominant concept for decades. No longer, the balance of power has shifted, with the seller ceding control to a more sophisticated and cynical breed of buyer. To demonstrate this point we have taken two recent books for buyers – The Vendor Management Office and The Contract Negotiation Handbook by Stephen Guth […]
From Sales Person to Trusted Advisor – Making The Transition
Wouldn’t your job be a lot easier if your customers and prospects saw you as a trusted advisor, rather than a salesperson? Well if the answer is ‘yes’ then ‘Trust-Based Selling by Charles H. Green’s is a must read. Do Buyers Trust Salespeople? The reality is that the words ‘sales’ and ‘trust’ are rarely used […]
Holding A Mirror Up To The Buyer
A salesperson’s needs to hold a mirror up to the buyer in order to fully understand his, or her needs. The objective is a two-fold one: 1. To understand what buyers sees as their needs so that they can be resolved by the seller’s solution 2. To shape that view by raising buyer awareness through […]
Big Name Suppliers Get The Boot
Yet another big IT project is in trouble reports the The Guardian. The 750 million UK electronic border control project was awarded in 2007 to a consortium that included Raytheon, Serco, Accenture, Detica and QinetiQ. Some 3 years later The Home Office has sacked The consortium and is seeking to award the contract to another. […]
Buyer-Seller Relationships: We Ask Dr. Phil for Advice
The straight talking TV psychologist Dr Phil Mc Graw would probably have a lot of say about the typical buyer-seller relationship. He might even go as far as calling some of them dysfunctional. After all, many buyer seller interactions are missing the following key ingredients: · Open communication · High levels of trust · High […]
Let’s Get Real, or Let’s Not Play – transforming the buyer-seller relationship
Relationships between buyers and sellers are often dysfunctional, often being motivated by fear. For the buyer that is the fear of being talked into buying the wrong solution. For the salesperson it is the fear of missing target. Rather than working together for a win-win outcome, both sides are often pulling against each other. However, […]
Sellers Look Out for Buyer Cold Feet
Sales people are increasingly learning that there is no such thing as a ‘sure thing’ sale. That is because as the sale approaches the buyer can get ‘cold feet’ and the salesperson may be the last person to know about it. For example, the salesperson’s proposal, presentation and price beats the competition, but somebody on the […]
From ‘Buyer Beware’ to ‘Seller Beware!’
Seller Beware! Caveat Emptor, or buyer beware was the dominant concept for decades. No longer, the balance of power has shifted, with the seller reluctantly ceding control to a more sophisticated and cynical breed of buyer. Today it is the seller who must beware! The seller is no longer ‘the ringmaster’ of the sale, often being […]
Introducing The Self-Contained Buyer!
(a) Buyers Are ‘Doing It For Themselves!’ Buyers are increasingly self-contained. They like to be in control and to stay in control. That means they start to elicit the requirements, build the business case and define the solution well in advance of meeting vendors. Buyers know that they have the power in a market where […]
6 Ways Buyers Can Defeat Seller’s Ploys
It is with just reason that buyers are skeptical of sellers and their ploys. The result is that they have developed a variety of means of keeping sellers in check. Here are some of the tips given by experienced buyers to their novice colleagues on the subject of managing sellers: Silence is golden! – Be guarded in […]
Bewildered By Today’s Buyers?
Buyers have rewritten the rules of modern buying. They are adopting an increasingly structured and indeed scientific approach to how buying decisions are made. The result is new steps, people and even logic involved in the buying decision. The only problem is that most sellers are not aware of these changes. Without an understanding of […]
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