What Does Your Buyer Need From You?

Two quick observations:

1. The pundits bemoaning how passive/soft the current generation of sellers is need to get off their high horses.

Personally, I believe there’s a level of energy and excitement in sales these days that previous generations couldn’t match. (Believe me, I’ve lived through a lot of them…)

How could you not be amped up by all the innovation taking place in our profession?

The challenge we face is learning how to meld this enthusiasm, innovation, processes and technology to best serve our buyers.

And, to harness these same elements to sustainably increase the revenue productivity of each individual seller.

We’re not there yet. However, I’m optimistic about the future.

2. Sellers have to exercise caution to not let innovation and technology obscure the very real importance of the human act of selling.

Geoffrey Colvin, author of the best-selling book, Talent is Overrated, wrote taha "Getting information pushes at the two constraints everyone faces: it takes time and costs money. Making sound decisions fast and at a low cost is a competitive advantage everywhere.”

Your buyers want to make faster purchase decisions because it creates a competitive advantage for their businesses.

This is where buyers depend on you, the sales professional.

Buyers need your help to quickly gather the information they need to make good decisions with the least investment of their time and money.

This means they need your questions, your insights, your acumen and your responsiveness to accelerate their ability to make a decision.

In other words, your buyer needs you to sell with Maximum Impact in the Least Time.

In my first book, Zero-Time Selling, I called this Selling with MILT. (You’ll meet MILT when you read my book.)

This means you have to plan every sales touch. Plan. no matter how large or how small, and the value you’ll deliver, to achieve the desired outcome of helping the buyer move closer to making their decision.

As Colvin pointed out, buyers see the ability to quickly navigate their complex buying process as a competitive advantage in the markets they serve.

Let’s say you’re selling a product that will transform your buyer's product line and enable them to quickly capture new market share.

Given that competitive imperative do you think your buyer wants to take six months to make a decision, if you could help them make it in four months? Of course not.

Can you sell with the maximum impact to make that happen?

- Andy Paul