Sales methodologies exist largely to make money for the authors and trainers. The ones that spring to mind include; Customer Centric Selling. SPIN Solution Selling, Huthwaite Research, Hiemen's New Strategic Selling etc. Like many people who have done these and others you begin to notice a common thread.
The sales cysle goes something like this - find the lead thats good, i.e. budget, timescale, key players, decision process, needs, (both technical & business!), competition etc. can quite easily be qualified, get in front of the prospect, sell the benefits, get your timing right and ask for the order!! Along the way this are acres written about establishing rapport, calculating ruturn on Investment (ROI), total cost of ownership (TCO), selling the vision, identifying and demonstrating alingment, selling benefits not features and all the blah blah that goes with all the above.
You can't document or certify the other methods that are far more intangible however; there's getting to know and like people - professionally - sometimes 'entertaining them', stalking people literally outside their offices, making hundreds of phone dials in one day just to speak to the right people, driving for hours on highly congested roads, marshalling 'internal resources' to maximise and leverage their full potential, 'knocking down doors', getting them drunk and yourself along with them. Buying breakfast lunch and dinner for people, taking them to seedy bars, informing them about events, selling bums on seats at these events, being ultra responsive, getting them to come to all your boss's favourite sporting venue, getting them to commit to a round of golf with ..... your boss, buying champagne and flowers for the prospect's PA for all her help, pretending you know what techies are talking about at all times, looking really interested, being a smart and credible professional. ....
Its this very last point - the credibility that very often seems to elude us however - and I think its the key to the whole thing.....
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