For someone to sell, someone else has to buy. It is a single act with two parties. We very much like our linear processes, the sales process, or our best plan for what you need to do to create and win opportunities. Most sales processes pay little…
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My brother-in-law is a football coach. His oldest son started as a quarterback in his freshman year of high school, and he started as a safety on defense. He was the best player on the field and eventually played for Ohio State. My…
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Because the buyer’s journey or process (or both) are more nonlinear than ever, that sales process (or sales conversation, if you will) follows suit. The fact that both are nonlinear speaks to the fact that you often have to figure out what to do…
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Of all the changes in selling over the last decade and a half, the changes on the buyer's side may be the most disruptive. No doubt that some part of that change belongs to the proliferation of information available via the internet. However,…
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Despite our best efforts to see both the sales process and buyer's journey as linear, reality provides a truth that is at odds with what might better serve us—and our clients. In complex, B2B sales, it is more often that deals take a circuitous…
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In the past, the word discovery was used to describe both a stage in the sales process as well as an outcome. Both the stage and the outcome described the process of asking clients to share their dissatisfaction with their results, their supplier,…
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As much as we have come to describe the sales conversation (or buying process) as linear, it is nonlinear. Our slide decks that show pictures of boxes that start on the left side with target, finishing on the right with the sale complete. Deals do…
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This post was originally posted on LinkedIn. I posted it here so that I would always be able to point to it on a site that I control. The comments live there, too.
It’s likely that your sales process is broken. It probably isn’t producing…
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