OUR MISSION IS TO CHANGE THE WAY YOU THINK ABOUT SELLING
STATISTICS:
A. 80% of businesses stay with their incumbent even when they’re SLIGHTLY UNHAPPY. (The devil you know is better than the one you don’t know).
B. It costs a company SIX TIMES as much money to secure a new account than it does to keep an existing one. So even if you have a better price, the incumbent will simply match or even beat it.
C. 65% of prospects that salespeople actively work with at any given time NEVER result in a sale.
SO LET’S GET REAL …
The #1 rule in sales is NO PAIN … NO CHANGE. Forget about giving great feature/benefit presentations followed by a detailed proposal. Rather, how about determining the 20% who will change. In other words, who has issues that are mission critical: “We have to change,” vs. just irritants that “we can live with.”
The first test of mission critical is whether the prospect is willing to get “Skin in the game” - - that is, work with you in crafting a customized solution dovetailed to a budget or what the prospect was hoping to spend. Not to get involved forces you to guess, and guessing leaves you vulnerable to being perceived as ignorant and/or arrogant!
Finally, when working together there should be no surprises. The proposal is developed together. The specific issues (pain), solutions and pricing must be agreed to before delivery.
FAILURE only occurs when you decide to quit - - most fail because they quit too soon.
SUCCESS: a Carnegie Foundation Study once showed that only 15% of a business person’s success could be attributed to job knowledge and technical skills … essential elements, but a small overall contribution. It showed that 85% of one’s success would be determined by what they call “Ability to deal with people and attitude.”