It’s time we change the way we sell.  The old, tired, product-centric, sales techniques and methods have had their time.

Ask any buyer. They are fed up with the countless, lame, intrusive, valueless emails, cold calls and LinkedIn requests for 15-minutes of their time.

They are tired of salespeople not understanding their business and pitching irrelevant solutions. They are tired of long, cookie cutter demos that don’t address their needs as a company. They are tired of the seller’s company-centric pitch that talks about how long they’ve been on the Inc. 500 list or how many locations they have and how much their existing clients love them. They are tired of salespeople coming to them at the end of the quarter, pushing them to close with last-minute, end of the quarter deals to close before they are ready because the salesperson needs the sale.  They are just plain tired of the old school sale world and it’s me, me, me, focus.

Buyers want something different.  They just don’t have time to listen to salespeople talk about them, their products, their solutions, etc. Buyers want salespeople who uncover latent needs they, the buyer, didn’t know they had. Buyers want salespeople to put them first and take the time to understand their problems, their issues and what an ideal solution would look like. Buyers want salespeople who are emotionally connected to their outcome, not focused on quota, Presidents Club and their next commission check. Buyers want real trusted advisors, not the self-proclaimed, proverbial buzzword “trusted advisor.”  Buyers want authenticity. They want someone who will tell them how it is and have the knowledge, understanding, and expertise to be right and be able to back it up.

The sales world has failed the buyer for decades now. With our focus on tools, and automation, and social, and, and, and . . . We’ve lost sight of the fact that we still have to sell.  We still need to understand the problems, issues, and challenges our buyers are struggling with. We still have to understand where buyers want to go, their objectives, and goals. We still have to understand the buyers current processes, the impact of their current processes and problems have on the organization, why they exist and what it will take to solve them.

We’ve forgotten there is so much more to selling than fancy new structures and roles like inbound, outbound, SDR, BDR, Account Executives, Account Based Management, etc. We’re forgetting the selling part. The art of selling is losing out to the science, and the human element and buyers are the victims.

It’s time we change the way we sell. It’s time we put our buyer and the buyer’s organization smack in the center of the sale. It’s time we focus on the buyer’s issues, problems, and challenges. It’s time we LISTEN more. It’s time we ask more questions. It’s time we first seek to understand, not be understood. It’s time we subjugate our selfish needs to that of the buyers. It’s time we train our sales team on more than our products, but also on the environments we sell into, who we sell to and the issues and problems they face. It’s time management stop pushing salespeople to prematurely close a deal because they need to make an internal number. It’s time we change the way we sell.

Buyers are ready. Are you?

Good!

It’s about time we change the way we sell.