Selling, Fast and Slow*
Never before has sales been more important to the progress of mankind. To close the investment deals necessary to slow down and even reverse global warming. To provide stability and prosperity to maintain stable jobs. To help successful leaders pull the “buying trigger” to engage an internal or external coach to even further improve collaboration and business performance.
How to make selling better? Faster or Slower? As recently discovered using the WHY.os app, my WHY is to Find and Share a Better Way in Sales and Leadership. So let’s jump in!
In today’s CYNEFIN world of ever-increasing complexity, I am convinced that navigating polarities is what is needed. In other words, we need “both-and thinking,” not “either/or.”
Start Slow
Master sales trainer of over 100,000 sales professionals, Kevin Davis, distills 8 buying roles in his book Slow Down, Sell Faster!And he provides 8 distinct roles sales professionals must adopt in order to accompany prospects through the “Buy Learning Process.” My favorite? The “Doctor” role, where the sales professional diagnoses – like a doctor – questions to uncover the prospect’s pain – history, cause, complications, and cure – is my favorite. The guidance for this role alone, namely to slow down to better understand customer value has helped me to land million-dollar deals.
Filled with practical and immediately applicable examples gathered over 40 years of fanatical, singular focus on increasing sales, be sure to look out for the “Memo of Understanding” as well as checklists to make each step in the buy-learning process easier to implement. Another idea, the structured integration of “prospect go forward commitments” in planning each sales call not only increases sales, but has also helped multiple organizations to improve CRM data and make sales forecasting much more accurate.
Finish Fast
As soon as slowing down dramatically increased sales, along comes John Asher. He has trained 70,000 sales professionals, extracted the best from over 200 books, and participated in 15 different major sales trainings. His 2018 book Close Deals Fasterdistills the very best including neuroscience, leveraging research including LinkedIn, and leveraging social media to gain access to top decision-makers.
Most useful were two points: first the importance of focusing even more consistently on fewer prospects. Close Deals Faster even shares the number and type of customer interactions in a table, connected with an estimated percentage of deal success. Second, psychology, coaching mindset, and even NLP elements are described and integrated into the selling process in detail. For example, how to gain better awareness of buyer behavior type to match your sales approach Or how to “sense” when the close has occurred in the buyer’s body language and facial expressions.
Which sales insights have helped you to find a Better Way?
Special Thanks to Kevin and John and the many sales professionals who work each day to make the sales profession and the process for those navigating the “Buy-Learning” process even better.
* Thank you Daniel Kahneman for the inspiration for this title. Your work Thinking Fast and Slow inspires!
Bill Zeeb and the infinitas team help successful leaders and teams to be recognized and acknowledged by their coworkers as measurably more effective in 12 months or less. Guaranteed. Bill’s passion is to find and share a better way to leadership growth leveraging the scientific method and a highly structured and highly time efficient process proven with hundreds of CEO’s. A US citizen, who has lived and worked in Europe since 1990, Bill loves skiing 100+ days in one season, competing in extreme triathlons (first ever podium Alpes d’Huez 2019) and working with leaders who are ready to do the hard work to achieve extreme leadership and business growth, to better serve their teams and become better ancestors.
