Often when we’re talking about about sales, we seem to be saying the salesperson is in charge of when deals move forward and ultimately when they close. But that is not reality.
When you’re selling you are a steward of a buying process. You can influence when a sale happens, but you cannot overcome the inherent dynamics of how that customer wants to buy.
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In my last two posts (this one and this one) I described a framework for progressing larger sales opportunities that I have had a lot of success with. It is a process described in Robert Miller and Stephen Heiman’s book “Strategic Selling” (now called New Strategic Selling.) In this framework there are four types of people involved in a sale.
I described these four types of people and gave you some tips on how to find the fourth type of person a “coach”. The “coach” is the one type of person you don’t get for “free”. Having a coach is one of the most important factors in winning bigger deals.
Knowing how to sell to a “buying committee” like this is becoming more important as getting in the door gets harder and every opportunity more critical.
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I think it’s all about qualified leads. What do you think?
So I’ve tried most forms of sales and marketing techniques now. (I’m getting old/older!) But whichever way I slice it, it all comes back to the revenue bottleneck being qualified leads.
Notice I said “qualified leads” not “leads”. “Leads” are not that useful. [Read more…]