Sales Training Article: Is Your Organization REALLY Customer-Centric?

By John Holland, Chief Content Officer, CustomerCentric Selling® – The Sales Training Company

It’s that time when adults don costumes for Halloween parties. Some go out of their way to be different from their personas. A question for companies during this season: Are you masquerading as a customer-centric organization?

That phrase has become amorphous, so let’s make the criteria that company offerings reflect customer/market needs and sellers provide superior buying experiences.

Here are telltale symptoms you may have further to go in your journey to become customer-centric:

  • The person driving Sales Enablement* does not report directly to a CEO, COO or CFO
  • Approaches to selling new offerings are created after they’ve been developed
  • CRM milestones reflect selling steps without regard for how your buyers buy
  • Marketing promotes new offerings using “push” rather than “pull” strategies
  • Sellers treat educated buyers like clean sheets of paper as relates to their needs
  • There are few known instances of winning by providing better buyer experiences
  • Product training for sellers is noun-based (describes what offerings are)
  • Product training is not verb-based (how offerings can be used to achieve business outcomes)
  • Sellers lack business acumen to relate potential value to executives
  • Nurtured leads provide low entry points and low close rates
  • Sellers refer to sales cycles rather than buying cycles

Traditional approaches are hard to change. It takes more than lip service. Are your sellers offering buyers tricks or treats?

*I prefer the term “Buyer Empowerment” to shift the focus from selling to buying.

Take a look at the sales training workshops available to you.

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