Today’s B2B salespeople ply their trade in an atmosphere in which modern buyers – from the “unsellable generation”– are likely to distrust them automatically. To survive, sales experts Jerry Acuff and Jeremy Miner explain, salespeople must abandon antiquated methods and ideas and replace them with an up-to-date approach to selling that is in sync with today’s challenging times. The authors urge B2B salespeople to set aside uncomfortable sales personas and boiler room tactics. Instead, salespeople should think like their prospects. This strategy, Acuff and Miner promise, will humanize B2B selling, eliminate client resistance and pave the way to sales success.
Today’s B2B buyers are well-informed, skeptical and, often, “unsellable.”
In decades past, determined people with hustle could make a living in sales. Now, salespeople must somehow “sell to an unsellable generation.” This sounds tough – and it is. Selling has changed dramatically. For example, due to technological advances, the standard practice of cold calling is nearly dead. Many salespeople are struggling to keep up with a perplexing, frustrating and difficult sales world.
Today, thanks to the internet, social media, high-tech information analysis and new communication channels, buyers can – with a few mouse clicks – get all the sales information they need about their potential purchases. Modern buyers pride themselves on their skepticism, so they don’t trust salespeople or anyone else. Customers believe they are their own most trustworthy experts.
To sell to contemporary buyers, sales professionals must stop thinking like sellers and start thinking like their prospects and clients. Of course, this is not a new concept, but it leads to a new path: salespeople must organize...
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