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Jan27

by admin on January 27th, 2012 at 7:22 pm

Posted In: Coins

New Selling Skills Are Needed For Sales Success by Steve Eungblut

With both the public and commercial sectors facing an ongoing lack of confidence and cut backs in spending budgets, and competition becoming more aggressive every single day, sales professionals across a wide variety of industries are operating in environments which have become more challenging than ever before. With ongoing debt troubles and few signs of a significant recovery in developed economies, it is unlikely that these trends will cease to exist in the short term.

Constrained spending and aggressive competition is largely due to the various pressures which are now facing most senior executives, making them have to work much harder to succeed in today’s marketplace. In turn, the roles of sales and business development professionals have become far more difficult. Buying decisions are either being commoditized and decided upon on by price, or they are being viewed as strategic decisions and are therefore being made at a much more senior level, regardless of the size of their organization.

Consequently, if sales professionals want to win strategic and more profitable business, they need to sell more proactively and at a higher level.

But senior executives don’t want to be sold products…They want a proactive consultative sale that delivers real business value, return on investment and quick payback in terms of cash flow. It is for these reasons that traditional sales techniques, such as Feature, Advantage, Benefit (FAB) selling, are dead – they no longer work!

Traditional sales techniques no longer work…

Traditional sales people need to smarten up and their sales techniques need to evolve in the process. Consultative selling is the only way forward, even for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Instead of pushing the features, advantages and benefits of a solution, anybody in a sales role needs to understand and take advantage of the external pressures facing their clients. They then need to understand the client’s world and align their solutions with their client’s biggest pains (or fears) and their biggest desires.

Top-flight sales people in today’s marketplace open discussions around the client’s world before aligning the client’s needs and desires with their solution. This is a sure route to improving your selling skills and, thus, enhancing your sales performance and realized earnings – so long as you are capable of get meetings in the first place!

However, senior buyers are even less accessible these days because they are trying to succeed in a much more complex world and there are a lot of sales people out there trying to steal their time to ask them meaningless questions or tell them about the latest great product.

People in a sales role in the new world will need to be much smarter if they’re going to succeed in today’s world of B2B selling. If they can’t be smarter, they need to work smarter. They need practical and repeatable tools and techniques for consultative selling – whether they are selling products, services or a complex mix of both.

About the Author

Steve Eungblut is a highly experienced sales and business leader and is the founder and Managing Director of Sterling Chase Associates. Sterling Chase delivers transformational sales training and business development solutions for organizations of all sizes in the UK and around the globe.

Steve has held a number of senior leadership positions encompassing: service delivery; sales; business development; and general management positions, where he has led teams of up to 1,000 people. Steve has an MBA from Leeds Business School and is a Harvard Business School alumni. He is a fellow of the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management and is Vice President of the London Sales & Marketing Leadership Forum.

Visit Steve’s blog for regular sales tips, techniques and articles.