Selling To Teams: Lessons From Sport
Some organizations don’t do team work very well. That is a problem in the context of collaborative buying decisions, cross functional buying committees and internal approvals procedures. Some organizations are a dream to sell to, while others are a nightmare. The individuals involved may be nice to deal with, organized and professional. However when it comes to […]
How To Make The Category Manager Your Friend
Organizations are increasingly structuring their procurement in terms of key categories. This new state of play presents a range of opportunities, as well as challenges, for the seller. Above all else, it means the salesperson must work to make the category manager his or her friend. The following article shows how this can be achieved…
Your Sales Team Should Resemble The United Nations
“It was like The United Nations”, observed the sales director in describing the makeup of the sales team that had just arrived from his company’s consortium partner. Planning for preparing the multimillion-dollar bid was in full swing now that the team from the lead contractor in the consortium (a Fortune 1000 company) had arrived in its subsidiary partner’s boardroom…
How to Sell To Buyers Who Know More Than You
Most traditional sales techniques presuppose that the sellers knows more than the buyer. However, this does not fit with reality in respect of most complex buying decisions.
Beware: CC Lists are Getting Longer
All it takes is for one of the many CC’d recipients to raise a question, or a query to impact on the pace of the sale.
Buying Is Now A Team Sport
The modern buyer is a team, not an individual. Indeed, as the example shown earlier suggests, the roll call of all those involved in the buying decision is a veritable ‘who’s who’ of the organization. The excerpt below highlights the number of levels involved in the buying decision, the seniority of the decision makers as […]
Selling To The New Buyers
When it comes to major buying decisions, managers are pulling rank. Senior managers are not just rubber-stamping buying decisions. They are taking an active role to ensure all major purchases underpin organizational goals, priorities and strategies. When Buyers Pull Rank All this means the job titles of those involved in making today’s major buying decisions […]
The Buying Team – Redrawing The Atlas Of Buying
Once upon a time a question like “who makes the buying decision?” was easy to answer; one or two names were typically sufficient to describe where the power lay. But this is no longer the case, and nowadays sellers almost need a map of organizational buying to reflect all those who make and shape the buying decision…
Do Buyer Personalities Really Matter?
Buyer types and personalities features big in most sales books and training courses. After all, the buyer has a personality and that can also get in the way of the successful sale! A great many sales books and sales training courses tell the salesperson the he, or she must recognise and adapt to the […]
Caution: Buyers Are Weary Of Questions
There is a reason why buyers sit back and let salespeople do all the talking — it puts them in control. This is particularly the case because salespeople ask fewer questions when they are talking — questions that buyers may be slow to answer because of: • Political or other sensitivities. • Genuine information gaps. […]
Buyers Redefine Selling
It is well worth taking a few minutes to check that your view of selling is the same as that of the buyer.
You may well be surprised to find that it is not!
Buyer Types – Just how much can you tell from a limp handshake?
Sellers have long been advised to adopt their sales approach to reflect the personality type of the buyer. But just how much can you tell from a limp handshake? Well if you put a lot of store in buyer personality types perhaps a lot! We are going to examine the four basic personality types in a moment, […]
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