Training Industry Magazine - Summer 2014 - (Page 36)

SalesEWinners S E L L D I F F R E N T LY: HOW SELLING IS AND ISN'T CHANGING by Mike Schultz Over the past 40 years, many companies have identified themselves as solution providers. The self-images of sellers have been that of consultative and relationship sellers. In the last few years, however, there's been a trend to question whether concepts like solution-, consultative-, and relationship-focused selling approaches should be retired altogether. These aren't small tactics to dismiss. They're literally how people identify themselves. But before people and companies undertake a major cultural shift, it was important for us to know who was winning big sales, and what they were doing. So we went to the source, the buyers. In fact, we studied more than 700 business-to-business purchases to find out what the winners of these opportunities did to win. We compared what the winners did versus the sellers who came in second place, and who ultimately lost. The results, published in the book, "Insight Selling: Surprising Research on What Sales Winners Do Differently," are both surprising and fascinating. Not only do sellers who win sell differently, they sell radically different, than the sellers who come in second place. Also, the winners - who come from, and sold to, a wide variety of industries - all happened to sell like each other. 36 The sellers who win consistently demonstrate behaviors on three levels: they connect, convince and collaborate. CONNECTING Sales winners connect the dots between needs and solutions. In addition, they build relationships in both the business sense and by connecting with buyers personally. In other words, it's not the end of solution sales, and selling is still about relationships. However, sellers need to do more than what's typically associated with solution and relationship selling. Neil Rackham, author of "SPIN Selling," said in the foreword to, "Insight Selling," that "Admittedly our present ways of doing things will need to be refocused and retuned to align them with the rapidly changing sales world, but existing methods are not outdated and are certainly not useless." Sales winners connect the dots and connect with people, but these things alone do not get them the win. They have to do more. They must build upon what they already know. http://www.rainsalestraining.com/sales-resources/books/insight-selling/ http://www.rainsalestraining.com/sales-resources/books/insight-selling/

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Magazine - Summer 2014

From Where I Sit
Table of Contents
Guest Editor: Developing Emerging Talent Pipelines
The Inherent Inertia of Training
Stop Harping on Generational Differences
Learning to Live the Brand
Leading through a Merger and Acquisition
Organizational Change through Applied Learning
Influencing without Line Authority: A Key Skill for Virtual Project Managers
The Currency of Trust: The Difference between Flourishing and Floundering
Building Buy-in for Learning Investments
Sales Winners Sell Differently: How Selling Is and Isn't Changing
From Mind-Full to Mindful: The Intention/Instruction Intersection
The Implications of Organizational Forgetting
Casebook: ADP: Improving Sales Process Effectiveness
Sustaining Training's Impact
Managing at the Speed of Business
Becoming an Authentic Leader
What's Online
Company News

Training Industry Magazine - Summer 2014