The Sales Profession is changing.\u00a0 Not too long ago there was still a core belief from C-teams down through first level sales management that selling was about persuading, convincing, entertaining and even coercion.\u00a0 As a rep I remember sitting in the dreaded weekly sales roundtable as the sales manager went rep-to-rep asking each of us what we were doing to “close the customer.”<\/p>\n
We used terms like battle plans and top reps were called Fighter Pilots.\u00a0 I was never sure who should have been more insulted by that one, the poor unknowing prospects or the real fighter pilots out there defending our country.\u00a0 Humorously, “Must Win Deals” were privileged to make it to the war room<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Clever phrases were everywhere, all claiming to offer the magic formula to break down prospects’ defenses and convince them to buy something they didn’t know they couldn’t survive another quarter without.\u00a0 Here are some of the infamous favorites.<\/p>\n Creating FUD<\/strong> (as in Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt).\u00a0 It claimed that only when your prospect was truly experiencing that sorrowful state would they finally break open their checkbook and pay your company to make it go away.<\/p>\n Penetrate and Radiate<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0 Still sounds more like a lethal disease than a sales strategy, but it rhymed so it qualified.<\/p>\n Selling to VITO<\/strong>, (as in Very Important Top Officers).\u00a0 Send a letter to the admin telling them you would be calling the boss next Tuesday at 2:00.\u00a0 When that time rolled around she completely forgot how that mystery appointment appeared and put you through immediately.<\/p>\n Cold Calling<\/strong>.\u00a0 At least the pre-caller ID old days gave us poor reps the chance to launch into our unexpected and unwanted ambush. If you think it effective, Amazon still carries more than 172 titles dedicated to calling somebody who doesn’t want to hear from you.<\/p>\n ABC (Always Be Closing).<\/strong> As in “A-B-C. A-always, B-be, C-closing. Always be closing! Always be closing!!<\/em>”\u00a0 (Glengarry Glen Ross<\/span>, written by David Mamet).<\/p>\n The premise of most of these slogan strategies was to reach the summit of prospect dialogue and gain the opportunity to deliver that almighty, perfect phrase, a.k.a. ‘the Unique Selling Proposition’, ‘Key Differentiator’, ‘Value Proposition’, etc.\u00a0 Somehow that astonishing turn of phrase would create need where there was none previously, fear that indecision would prove disastrous, or visions of profit sugarplums that only your solution could render.<\/p>\n Times have indeed changed.\u00a0 Sales success today is empowered by technology, automation, real-time intelligence, micro-segmentation and science.\u00a0\u00a0 Sales reps still play a vital role, as does sales management, but neither has anything to do with catch-phrase sales strategies.<\/p>\n The only slogan that still matters is the new<\/em><\/strong> “ABC’s of Sales” – Always Be Changing.<\/p>\n Are you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Sales Profession is changing.\u00a0 Not too long ago there was still a core belief from C-teams down through first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8011"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8011"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8012,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8011\/revisions\/8012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}