Any sales process has a start and endpoint.
It begins with engagement with a prospective. It then defines the various steps leading to either a mutually rewarding decision to engage with a product or service implementation…or, an opportunity for us to reflect with the team and (if possible) the prospect on what went wrong.
I guess that much is obvious, but in reality, the devil is in the detail. The road to success in a complex, B2B sale is not the straight line many imagine or hope for, it’s a road littered with the corpses of those who have gone before us and failed. It has its own points of failure. We encounter personalities that will help us…and hinder us. Those who will like us, those who won’t. But if we remain focused on the goal and understand we need to be flexible with the tactics we apply, when and where, we improve our chances of success. We won’t straighten the path, but we will make it a more comfortable path…it may even feel straight.
This is what David Dulany and I discuss in this Tenbound, The Sales Development Podcast.
We explore how, in writing a novel about complex selling, John Smibert, Jeff Clulow were able to use a story and characters we can all relate to, to uncover the politics, pitfalls, rabbit-holes and various archetypes and personalities that we’ll engage with in a complex sales. Those who are there to give us a leg up, those who are there to trip us up.
We also chat about how I got into sales, why I left the corporate world and my role as an independent sales coach and mentor. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW,
