Have you ever noticed that the best salespeople, what I call a "pro's pro", actually speak the least amount. That being said, when they do speak each word has the most possible influence on the buyer. The reason they speak the least is because they adhere to the Sage selling principle "first seek to understand, then seek to be understood." When you are leveraging the Sage customer centric selling methodology, the seller is only speaking 20-25% of the time and buyer 75-80%. This also provides a very important benefit to the seller, which I will discuss in a later blog post, which is the importance of "active listening."
What the Sage Selling methodology teaches is counterintuitive in a number of ways, especially when compared to traditional selling methodologies. For example, the Sage methodology teaches that it is the buyer's responsibility to deliver the first presentation, not the seller's. Yes, the buyer presents to the seller, not the other way around, early in the sales cycle. The buyer's other responsibility is to convince the seller to sell. At this qualification stage it is not the seller's responsibility to sell (that comes later). The seller is actually presenting too, but they are presenting up a number of thoughtful questions regarding the buyer's potential needs and requirements. The seller is actually "testing the waters" with these questions to determine if the buyer has needs and how important they are in resolving. If you noticed I utilized the word "thoughtful" and I did it for a reason. The questions the seller is presenting to the buyer have to be areas where the seller knows, through research and experience, the buyer has some level of need. For example, if I am a SaaS company and my solution improves "network security" as a value proposition, the questions I am presenting up have to do specifically with "network security." I know this is very common sensical, but too often I see fundamental selling teams fail when the sellers are too busy talking about their solution vs. facilitating a process to have the buyer focused and sharing their needs, the impact to their business, and the priority of resolving.
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