The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Culture is defined as a way of life for a group of people. When in doubt about what to do, the members will fall back on what they have learned from their culture. They don’t even think about it—they know what their culture would tell them to do.

Business organizations all have a culture, and when you walk into a business and take an instant like or dislike to being there, you are experiencing their culture. Sometimes they don’t even have to say anything—it’s an attitude you can almost feel.

Business-to-business organizations don’t often have potential customers walk into a physical location. Often a salesperson is how the client and prospect experience your organization’s culture. What is your sales culture telling them?

If you’re in sales, you spend a lot of your time asking other people to buy what you sell. What about the last time you purchased something? Coffee on the way to work, an app on your phone, or maybe a new home appliance?

Why did you buy it now, instead of later? I find my tipping point is often based on my experience during the purchase process.

What is the best way is to start a conversation? Ask the other person a question. 

We learn by asking questions.

Smart business people never stop asking questions. Your prospect probably forms their opinion about you based more on what you ask them, than on what you tell them.

“Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers” - Voltaire

Our founder, Steve Marx, used to say that things should be no longer than they need to be, but also no shorter. Applying that to the sales process, it should take no longer than it needs to be effective, but also no shorter.

In the sales process, some prospects are traveling toward you; others are traveling away. It would seem that we should just pitch and close the ones that are traveling quickly toward us, right?

Steve’s advice would be that it should take no longer and no shorter than we need to accomplish our objective. In sales, that’s achieving their business objectives.

To pick someone up has been used as slang, according to Dictionary.com, since at least the 1600s.

Today's pick-up line means a rehearsed remark to strike up a conversation with the goal of pursuing a more gratifying relationship later.

Many salespeople have a rehearsed line meant to initiate a relationship with a prospect to satisfy their need to make another sale. Even when you’ve tried to find a Valid Business Reason (VBR), you might still end up sounding like you’re using a pick-up line.

How can you tell if your VBR has value to the prospect?

Your biggest competition in B2B sales can be what might be described as the comfort of the blue pill, as made famous in the Matrix series.

In the movie, Morpheus, describes the blue pill as waking up in your bed and believing whatever you want to believe.

There's a natural desire for prospects to want to believe things are good and have a preference for doing nothing. At least nothing in relation to your product or service.

The blue pill and red pill choice that Morpheus gives Neo in the Matrix comes into play in sales when you have insights. The red pill is one that may prompt the prospect to make changes in their status quo. It’s a choice the client must make for themselves, but your approach will have a great influence on that choice.

If you’re in sales, there’s a good chance that you will soon close another deal.

But why? Why do clients buy what you have to sell, and then, why don’t they buy?

First, you need to follow a logical process; ours is the Sales Accelerator, but today we’re going to look to Ancient Greece and what Aristotle believed were four main causes of how things come to be. In this case, how your sales or lack of it came to be.

Many believe prospecting for new clients is the most difficult stage in the sales process.

Working at the top of the funnel is certainly filled with more rejection and dead ends than you’ll encounter once you connect and are into the discovery and advise stages.

With all the challenges in the early part of the sales process, it’s not surprising that many salespeople settle for less than desirable new accounts. These accounts often ending up spending less and wanting more. They may not be the best product fit, their results are mediocre, and they doubt the effectiveness of your solutions. They take precious time away from working with more ideal targets and key accounts. And they can suck the life out of your passion for being in sales.

Without quality activity, sales teams fall short of their performance goals.

If it seems that more than a third, or even more than half, of your team is struggling with producing quality activity, it’s time to take a hard look at your sales structure, because your sales structure is perfect­ly designed for the results you’re getting.

To identify where you might have a problem with your sales structure, break the sales process into three key areas:

• Generating Leads
• Selling Solutions
• Serving Clients

Is there one clear area that more than a third of your team is struggling with?

To start something at the beginning and complete it (in order) to the very end is seen as a virtue. Linear thinking is logical, and experts say that most of us in the western world rely on it 90% of the time. But don’t let that limit you into believing there's always just one path to the best result.

What result do you want from sales training? To say the team completed all the courses or learn to sell smarter or faster?