Читать книгу Elite Sales Strategies - Anthony Iannarino - Страница 20

The modern approach is consultative, requiring much more of the salesperson. Modern contacts, stakeholders, decision-makers, and decision-shapers need salespeople to create greater value (read: more help). No client finds value in a conversation that doesn't help them improve their decisions and their results.

The focus of the sales conversation is no longer “why us” or “why our solution.” Instead, it's now about “why change” and “why now.” Instead of relying on your company and your solutions for your credibility, trusting you can create value in the sales conversation, the modern approach requires arming yourself with insights and a certain perspective on what your client needs to do to improve their outcomes.

Because you already know what problems the companies you call on are experiencing, instead of helping the client to identify a need or a problem that needs solving, the modern approach starts by helping your contacts understand their world—one often marked by dissonance stemming from the constant, accelerating, disruptive change in their environment. By explaining the nature of their contacts' challenges, the One-Up salesperson helps them recognize the need to do something different and provides them with the ability to improve their results. It's important to note that none of these outcomes require you to mention your company, your products, your services, or your “solutions.”

When your clients need significant change, that decision isn't going to come from a traditional decision-maker or a buying committee. The larger and more strategic the initiative, the more you are going to need something closer to organizational consensus. Instead of objections, you find your contacts with real concerns that speak to their uncertainty, which often paralyzes them and prevents them from moving forward. Being One-Up is required to resolve those concerns and create certainty around doing what is necessary to improve your client's position.

As the (One-Up) person best positioned to guide the (One-Down) client to the better results they need, you must lead them. We'll cover some leadership tactics later, but for now, know that your insights include which conversations your stakeholders need to have to make the best decision for their company. You can think of this as an agile, facilitated, needs-based buyer's journey. While the legacy approaches treated the sales conversation as linear, a straight line from Target to Closed/Won, the modern approach accepts that both sales conversations and decision-making are now nonlinear, requiring the agility enabled by being One-Up.