Four Reasons Selling Is More Difficult Now (and what to do about it)

You might believe selling is more difficult now than it has been in the past. And for many reasons, it is. Here are four big reasons selling feels more difficult and what you can do to make it easier.

Latent Dissatisfaction: Your dream clients should be dissatisfied, but they are not. Many of them don’t know that better results are possible. Some of them don’t believe that better results are possible. And more than a few are complacent, bathing in the lukewarm status quo. When there is no belief that change is necessary, there is no reason to change. For my money, this is the most pernicious problem facing salespeople and the sales organizations that employ them.

You make selling easier when you create dissatisfaction. You need to show your dream client what better looks like.

Risk and the Fear of Change: Plenty of your dream clients know that they need to change. But they are afraid. Change brings risk. What if it doesn’t work? What if it makes things worse? What if I am embarrassed? How painful is this going to be? Your dream client contacts want to avoid risk. They want to be certain they are going to succeed.

You make selling easier when you eliminate risk and fear by spending time explaining how you are going to ensure they succeed and how you are going to mitigate risk.

Crowded Markets and Commoditization: For most of us, there are plenty of competitors in our space. We look a lot alike. We sound a lot alike. It’s difficult for our dream clients to know who is worth spending time with and who isn’t. They believe that everyone in your space is about the same, that no one is really better than the rest of the field. So they default to seeing no one–no one except the few who can differentiate themselves and their offering.

You make selling easier when you differentiate yourself and your offering. You make it easier to win new business when you avoid playing “me too.”

Poor Buyer Psychology: Some buyers believe the only thing that matters is price. They believe that they can have better, faster, and cheaper. Some of these buyers aren’t willing to even entertain salespeople who won’t first submit that they are coming into the conversation agreeing that they will try to meet or beat their current price. Some salespeople feed this poor psychology, driving their prospect deeper and deeper into the belief that they can underinvest and still get the results they need.

You make selling easier by making the case for the right investment and building consensus high enough in the organization that you can help change the psychology. You make it easier by providing proof, and sometimes by instilling the necessary fear that your prospect should have around their lack of investment.

What about consensus? I am glad you asked. Check out my post over at Salesforce.com.