Selling in the last ten to fifteen years has gone through a cultural shift due to the general lack of trust buyers have with sales reps today.
The first major challenge today is customers are overworked. They want shorter sales calls. The idea of sitting around with a customer for an hour just chatting to strengthen their relationship rarely happens today because customers just don’t have time.
A second challenge is buyers have lost respect for most salespeople. If you wanted to buy something ten or fifteen ago, the first thing you’d have done was talk to a sales rep. But today you’re going to talk to your friends or do research on the Internet before talking to a sales rep to protect yourself from being taken advantage of.
A third challenge is buyers tend to assume everything today has the same quality. The quality programs of the 1980s really screwed up our selling lives. As quality improved, buyers saw less differentiation between those products. If you go to Walmart and buy a $10 toaster, you still expect it to last ten years.
Today’s video talks about these profound changes in selling and how in today’s tougher selling environment, we need more effective salespeople. Think your team is ready to get even better (so they can sell even more)?