However, if you look at it, the fundamentals we are talking about were discussed by Peter Drucker in his writings in the 50′s. Mack Hanan wrote “Consultative Selling” in the late 60′s, and Neil Rackham’s work was well known in the late 60′s and early 70′s. Everything since then has been fundamentally a re-expression of that work.

Now here’s the kicker, we are talking about the same issues, with the same sense of transformational urgency. Take provocative selling as the latest incarnation. It is simply helping the customer achieve their business goals, solve their problems (realized or not). The key question is why are we, as a profession, still acting like Bill Murray in GroundHog Day? Why do we keep talking about the same thing, why can’t we execute and grow–as a profession an move beyond this. I first started selling in the late 70′s. I learned a consultative, problem solving sales approach. Why are we still having the same conversations? Why are we packaging and repackaging the same ideas (though the repackaging has some merit because it causes you to look at things from a slightly different perspective)? What causes us, as a profession, to be having the same conversation over and over.

I have some guesses about this,and have spoken to other thought leaders about this issue. Recently, I spoke to Mack Hanan, and we tend to agree. I’d be interested in your views.

Thanks for the comments. I’m really looking forward to the discussion.

As you point out, we would be so much more effective if we were purposeful in what we do. Sales is about trust and relationships. It is also about purposefulness in helping the customer achieve their goals as we also achieve ours.

Great observations. Thanks for contributing. I look forward to your future comments.

The process should stimulate “thought-fullness” with the sales person, and not be a blindly executed checklist. In inspecting the process, for example the questions you ask a person, one of the goals is to look at the quality of their thinking about the sales opportunity. If they cannot answer basic questions having to do with the process, that should make a manager suspect and cause further inspection—both to win the deal and, if they consistently can’t answer these questions, of the person’s abilities as a sales person.

Unfortunately, people focus on activities and transactions, not the process. When we do this, we lose the opportunity to really understand performance and drive great performance—which is the point you make very nicely.

Thanks for taking the time to comment, please keep it up. It creates a great dialog!

We put the process in place because it enables us to achieve goals effectively and efficiently. We inspect how well our people are executing the process–which should be considered as guidelines

The sales process may be in place used or unused but what is the point when the sales team could not understand how to execute the criteria which I quote from your blog “They had two key activities in the discovery phase of their sales process: Understand the customer decision making process and who is involved. Also, Understand the criteria by which the customer will evaluate the investment in the solutions and justify it internally”.

The centre of the sales process is to be able to link their solutions to the business drivers of their decison makers and demonstarte clearly the financial benefits and in another word ROIs. The discovery process is in understanding the business priorities of the BDMs.

Sadly, most experienced understand the process but they just don’t know how to execute the part on engaging BDMs and convert the access into value and thus they lost their strategiuc deals and customers and finally lose all interest in upkeeping the sales process and those without sales process, this discussion does not exist.

Thanks
Dan