Front Office Box

To make the sale we have to meet the objectives of the decision maker, and accommodate the constraints within which s/he can decide in our favour. This may make life complicated, but that’s to our advantage. The competition is likely to be thinking the sale is simple, and leaving the door open for us.

Just about everything you’ll read about selling is rubbish (apart from my blog, that is). That’s a bold statement isn’t it? Read on.

Everything I read about selling assumes prospects are jerks. That’s why it’s rubbish. They may be jerks, but they’re jerks with brains and budgets. And we can’t get to the budgets unless we deal with the brains. In which case they aren’t jerks at all. They’re brains, and brains we need to work with.

To do that we need to get into their agenda – what they’re buying (as opposed to what we’re selling). That agenda works in three dimensions:

Even in the smallest deals, and maybe with individuals as opposed to companies, the model still applies.

We described the way to handle this seemingly broken circle in Selling is About People but here’s the best summary I can come up with:

In order to make the sale we have to meet the objectives of the decision maker, and accommodate the constraints within which s/he can decide in our favour. This may make life complicated, but that’s to our advantage. The competition is likely to be thinking the sale is simple, an

January 25th, 2010 - Posted in Sales Coach  |  Add a Comment