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The central point behind Jill Konrath’s second best selling sales book, SNAP Selling, is that buyers are now super-frazzled individuals. Sales people need to realize this and adapt their approach accordingly. No more long rambling emails or voice mails.
But here’s something I am noticing more-and-more these days: it’s not only prospects that are super-frazzled (they still are that has not changed) but it’s everyone I deal with that is super-frazzled. Colleagues, reports, partners – even my family members.
It seems that nearly everyone I talk to has no time.
It often comes across as they don’t have time for me – or for my priorities. Now, I try not to take any of this personally. But how do I influence these people? How do I make the outcomes I’m working on (like my sales goals) something they will take action on? How do I do this when no one is really listening?
I don’t think I’m not the worst communicator in the world so suspect I’m not the only one experiencing this.
Right now I’m spending a lot of time working in an environment where there are multiples teams. To achieve my goals I need to influence multiple teams to get them to allocate some time to my products – I need some of their sales time. But everyone in this environment is deadline-driven and hence it seems super distracted.
In this type of environment, I’m finding even my own colleagues require a lot of “sales effort” to persuade them to help me to sell my stuff.
So what should I do? I suspect the answer has to do with hitting my colleagues between the eyes with a strong value proposition that is clearly tuned to their WIIFM station.
This means the battle to hone your vale proposition and tailor it to your “buyer” happens earlier – and more often – in the sales process than ever before. Even gathering internal resources these days requires highly targeted selling that cuts through the crazy noise in our world today.
How about you? Do you find your colleagues and partners require more selling than ever? Are they more distracted than ever? How do you deal with it?