Gap Selling

Some provoking questions you could try: What happens when you…? Has there ever been a time when…? If you did X, what do you think would happen?

Can they identify the gap? Can they explain how they calculated it? 4. Can they name the customer’s intrinsic motivations for buying? 5. Can they list the buyers’ decision-making criteria? 6. Can they provide evidence that all of this information is accurate? 7. Do they know what will happen next and when?

the nine truths of selling play out in every sales transaction you’ll ever engage in. They are: No problem, no sale In every sale there’s a gap All sales are about change Customers don’t like change Sales are emotional Customers do like change when they feel it’s worth the cost Asking “Why?” gets customers to “Yes” Sales happen when the future stat

humans suffer from longevity bias, the phenomenon in which we ascribe more positive feelings toward things that have been around for a while than toward things that are new. Interestingly, when those in the study were given five choices by which to rank the reason for their opinion, they consistently marked time on the market as the least important

According to CSO Insights World Class Sales Practices Report, only 53% of salespeople in 2016 attained quota, down from 63% in 2012.i What’s going on? Part of the problem is that salespeople have become overly reliant on selling tools. They are also victims of unrealistic sales quotas, poor sales management, and the absence of a formal sales proces

you’re going to use what sales influencer and author Deborah Calvert calls “command statement starter words”: “Tell me a little bit about the events you put on.” “Help me understand . . . ” “Could you please describe . . . ?” “Could you walk me through . . . ? So rather than ask, “How do you market to your buyers?” you can ask, “Could you walk me t

The numbers you want to pay attention to are your salespeople’s: Average close rates Average deal size Average length of sales cycle Average number of new deals to the pipeline

The CRM Challenge is all about making sure you gather and document so much identifiable information about your buyers’ problems that your discovery notes would make it crystal-clear which opportunity it was without you ever having to look at identifying data, or even the industry.

All right, let’s look at all the super simple ways this letter could be improved...