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People are buying in different ways than they did five or ten years ago, largely due to the Internet. And because of this, selling has had to evolve like never before. What worked for sales winners in the past is no longer resulting in the same amount of success.
These trends inspired a new RAIN Group study, where 700 business-to-business purchases, representing $3.1 billion in annual buying, were examined. RAIN Group co-president Mike Schultz shared the results on a recent episode of sales guru Dan Waldschmidt’s EDGY Perspectives Show.
According to Schultz, there are three major factors perceived by buyers as something that sales winners always do, and second place finishers never do.
Here are the radical differences:
The sellers that win connect with people. In addition, they connect the dots between needs and solutions. Although a recent Harvard Business Review article proclaimed The End of Solution Sales, Schultz contests that statement. He says the results of RAIN Group’s study show that sales people who didn’t implement a solutions approach when connecting to customers didn’t even make it to final consideration. He adds that although the ways the method is implemented are evolving, the concept remains the same.
The sellers that win convince their buyers that they and their company offer the maximum return and minimum risk. Schultz says that salespeople often don’t want to do too much convincing with prospects, because they worry people will doubt their intent. They are afraid it will hurt their “trusted advisor” status, or make them look like they have an “agenda.” But according to the survey, buyers were not bothered by efforts to convince them, as long as they had already established trust and a relationship, as touched on in the first point.
The sellers that win bring creative insights to the table. Schultz says that the power of the sales person has shot up from where it was in the past. All things being equal, how the buyer feels about the seller is the final deciding factor. Prospects will ask themselves what they are getting over and above just the product or service itself. The seller that offers extra value through collaboration and the delivering of new ideas will be their ultimate choice.
Read more about what sales winners do differently in our free ebook.
