Sales Training Article: Two Suggested Resolutions for the New Year

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

It’s hard to believe that 2016 is nearly upon us. I hope you agree that changes in buying behavior have outpaced changes in selling approaches by a wide margin over the last 15 years or so. In my mind the gap will continue to widen over the coming years. With that in mind I’d like to propose a few simple New Years resolutions for your consideration.

A concern I have is that terminology used in sales offices by sellers and their management team may be used when sellers are talking with prospects and customers. For that reason I’m going to suggest that you do a “search and replace” for 2 words that are commonly used.

1. Whenever a seller uses the word deal when talking to me I harken back to negative experiences I’ve had buying cars and the high-pressure closing tactics used to prevent me from leaving dealerships. It’s bad enough to use that term in B2C sales when it’s unlikely the buyer and seller will ever meet again, but in B2B transactions it can be outright offensive. For those reasons my suggestion is to use the word transaction, a word that can be used both internally and externally when discussing opportunities.

2. While more B2B transactions then ever are being initiated by researchers/buyers, sellers/vendors cling to the term sales cycles. It would seem a better term to apply to all would be buying cycles. It’s a minor change, but at least it would have sellers/vendors looking in the right direction and hopefully can be a part of being more customer-centric. It also has sellers realize that for most inbound opportunities buyers/researchers are dictating how they want to buy.

These small changes and the realization that buyers prefer to buy rather than be sold may help you better align with today’s buyers.

Best wishes for 2016.

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