Deals take place because the customer finds a reason to buy and that is not always the same as our reasons to sell. It is entirely possible to sell the wrong thing.
As salespeople, we love to be able to communicate our key competitive advantages and marketing teams invest huge resources into defining their Value Propositions. Both these things are valuable, and even essential to creating a winning sales story, but remember that our perspective is pretty ‘inside out’. We see the world from our standpoint and often as not we pick out our favorite ‘benefits and advantages’ to lead with, but personal experience of selling into B2B markets has taught me a few valuable lessons.
First customers often buy DESPITE the big sales pitch and second, we can sometimes sell a solution to what the customer believes is the real problem only to find out that both the customer and ourselves have been looking in the wrong place.
Investing in a bit of sales humility and having the courage to put the customer in the driving seat when it comes to pain definition might go against the grain for many salespeople, but it could be the only way to make sure that you don’t end up selling the wrong thing or even selling the right thing for all the right reasons.
If you want to get more from Bill, you can find his book here
https://www.amazon.com/Bootstrap-Selling-Sandler-Bill-Morrison
You can also buy it as an Audible book here:
https://www.amazon.com/Bootstrap-Selling-Sandler-Way Audible
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