Consultative Selling
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One Thing Missing from The New Way of Selling – Part 2
- July 2, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Selling is still selling and while a lot has changed in the last 10 years, a lot of it hasn’t. I’m a social seller. Social sellers get found, find prospects and connect using a myriad of social selling tools. But once a meeting has been scheduled, the social must be dropped in favor of the selling. A prospect should only be aware of a terrific conversation, but process and methodology must be hidden backstage.
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The One Sales Question I’ve Been Wrong About for Years
- July 1, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I must be a moron. Stupid. Dumb. Blind. Certainly, I couldn’t have been paying attention or it wouldn’t have taken me 28 years to figure this one out!
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This is the One Thing Missing from the New Way of Selling
- June 20, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Prospects aren’t ready to buy at this point in their process, they’re just getting finished with looking at their options! Salespeople don’t have qualified or closable opportunities at this point, but they’re acting as if they did, creating and sending unqualified proposals, making assumptions, and hoping for the best.
What’s Missing?
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Could it Really be The Death of SPIN Selling?
- April 10, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The author wrote that since most prospects today know what they want, they won’t rehash all of the needs and decisions that got them to this point, and as a result, a salesperson won’t be able to back them up to an earlier stage of the sales process to implement SPIN or any other questioning strategy.
Well, maybe.
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Are Inside Sales and Consultative Selling Mutually Exclusive?
- April 7, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
In this discussion, we’ll focus on group #2, traditional inside sales, where salespeople field incoming calls from existing loyal customers, existing disloyal customers, and potential customers.
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Consultative Selling, Commitment and Training – Like Oil & Water
- March 14, 2014
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We recently evaluated a sales force where the salespeople had, on average, only 18% of the attributes of a consultative seller.
“How could that be?”, asked the Director of Sales. “Achieve Global has come in 3 times in 3 years to teach consultative selling!”
That could be the punchline, but it’s not.
So, why didn’t the training on consultative selling stick? There are reasons aplenty!
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What is the Most Difficult Part of the Sales Process?
- December 6, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
We discussed the various challenges associated with all three milestones and when all was said and done, everyone agreed that the midpoint, that crucial point in time where compelling reasons to buy must be identified, is the most difficult for salespeople.
Why? Well a quick look at the following list of mini-milestones, that must be accomplished in order to get to the point where compelling reasons will be shared, tells the whole story. How many of your salespeople can do all of this in their first meeting?
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Some Truths (You May Not Like) About Relationship Selling
- November 4, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
There are 4 possible relationship scenarios:
Strong relationship and you have the business.
Strong relationship, but you don’t have the business.
Lack of relationship and you have the business.
Lack of relationship and you don’t have the business. -
Experiment – Which Sales Approach is Really More Effective?
- October 28, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
During the past 90 days, I have been secretly selling multiple ways. On one third of our opportunities, I have been selling the way we teach – using a formal, structured sales process with a consultative approach. On another third of our opportunities (inbound leads), I have experimented with a more transactional approach, although even that has a consultative element because I can’t help but ask some good questions. It simply means that I show and tell much earlier than normal. With the remaining third of our leads, I have experimented with allowing the buyer to dictate the process. My buyer-dictated approach included a little push-back because I can’t allow a potential client to take the wrong approach to a solution.
Want to know what happened? Look at the table below:
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Selling – We’re Going Back to AIDA And You Should Be Scared
- October 25, 2013
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
While the tools have changed, information is available in the blink of a click, and leads are in huge supply, people, at their core, have not changed the way they buy.
Sure, they may be meeting with or speaking with salespeople later in their buying process. Sure, they may take longer to make decisions. Sure, they may be more diligent about spending their money. But the one thing that has not changed is that they still have some motivation – some compelling reason – to spend their money and spend it with you instead of someone else.
The rush to embrace inbound marketing comes with a false sense of security and a poorly grounded belief that the sale is somehow easier, faster and more demo-centric today.