The Sales Conversation (Part Three)
Don't Confuse Company With Employee
In a world where your product, brand, and service are the same as everyone else’s, it’s only your sales process that differentiates you.
The Challenger Sales Model
Just Give Me The Main Points
People in the same company can have different objectives.
A single sale can require multiple buyers to agree before making the purchase.
The same company can have different buyers, each of whom have different objectives and therefore will ask different questions.
SPIN selling can be used to understand the problems faced by each of the individual buyers
Don’t Confuse Company with Employee
The employee doesn’t necessarily want what the company wants. Fellow employees don’t necessarily want what each other wants.
Recognize that people in the same company can have DIFFERENT OBJECTIVES. Early in a salesperson’s career, they’ll think that everyone around the table wants the same thing…and they don’t. Different people want different things, even if they’re on the same team. Have you ever seen a player willing to score a lot of points even though their team is losing? Many such cases.
The Types of Buyers In A Complex Sale
That said, in a sale, you can group the decision-makers into buckets:
The Responsible: they do the work.
The Accountable: they get in trouble if the work isn’t done.
The Consulted: they’re asked questions about the work so it goes smoother.
The Informed: they’re kept in the loop about the work so they’re not unexpectedly impacted.
Different Role, Different Questions
Different roles ask different questions.
The accountable will worry about the budget, while the responsible will worry about the team’s ability to get the job done.
In the next post, we’ll focus on the process of SPIN, which is the process of problem-solving interactively with a client. Learning the process of SPIN gives you a distinct advantage over all other salespeople.
