What if you disarmed the thought of competition – and instead used a term I call, Industry Counterparts?  Industry Counterparts are people and companies in your market niche. What are 3 ways you can make your competitors into industry counterparts? There are no competitors, only industry counterparts. purged the word from my vocabulary years ago, and even though I work in “war rooms” with big technology companies where we work to determine our advantages in gaining new customers, I view things from an industry counterpart mentality. Use the abundance theory. MORE >>

The majority of Lead Development Reps are inexperienced, undertrained, and ill-equipped for today’s buyer. However, buyer behavior has changed. Informed buyer’s are entering the sales process with companies later than ever before. We are now living in the era of the self-directed buyer. If you want to converse with your buyer early in their buying process, the key is a confident, skilled LDR who serves as a resource. This is an astounding figure given the shift in buyer behavior. Knows how to write a relevant message to the buyer. Guess what? MORE >>

Before you make in-person or phone contact, decide what you and the buyer (prospect) are going to do next. Next actions are the fuel by which a seller can encourage a buyer to move forward. Without a seller discussing next actions, all our conversations would end about the same way – with the buyer saying, “Well, I’ll think about it and get back to you.”. Plus, during silent times, your potential customer is talking with your industry counterparts, or at least further researching them and getting advice from peers on what to do. Great comment and question. MORE >>

discuss how these Reps align themselves with the Buyer’s process to be successful. Then I provide a Buyer Alignment Tool to enable success in these environments. good place to start is by aligning yourself with the Buyer’s process. Frequently, Sales Reps are busy pitching their products without listening to their Buyers. They sometimes sell while the Buyer is still defining their problem. This is “misalignment” with the Buyer’s process (See Figure 1). Especially if the competition is listening to what the Buyer needs. Listen to the Buyer. MORE >>

The sales model ignores the buying environment all buyers live in outside of the purview of the seller. All buyers live in systems that must buy-in to a new purchase, regardless of the apparent need, and here is where sellers lose their sales. Let’s think of this in terms of your buyers. You work at educating your buyer as to how your solution will enhance their functioning, fix the problem, and in general do things much better than they are doing them now. But the sales model, with its focus on placing solutions, ignores the fact that buyers live in systems. MORE >>