Recorded: A Canterbury Tale of Modern Selling - 2: The Buyer's Tale

Story added:

Catch up now with this compelling and engaging series of Wednesday Workshop Webinars, which started with a round-up of all that is dead or dying in our sales techniques, tools and sales team management - in 2011 and beyond.

Now WATCH THE RECORDING HERE of The Buyer's Tale

I need more buyers - let me see this...

We constantly hear that buying has changed. That Buyers are now in control.

But what does this mean for us?

Has someone moved the signposts so they point away from sellers?

Attend this webinar for a thought provoking discussion on:

  1. Why buyers aren’t talking to sellers until they’ve made their decision.
  2. How this changes our sales methods.
  3. How it affects pricing, support and other product issues.
  4. Whether buyers have the right information to make the right choices without us.
  5. What we can do to influence these new buying decisions.

This round-table workshop-webinar with Peter Johnston, and Neil Warren will be of value to:

  • Telephone sellers
  • Face to face closers
  • Inbound sales people
  • Marketers
  • Anyone writing a blog or social media piece or running a webinar.

As well as anyone who likes their essential learning to be "free" (although you will need to buy your own lunch!).

Find you own convenient hour now, or share with colleagues as a free sales training module. Any which way or time you choose though, do not miss out on this essential tale of modern selling, and please feel free to CATCH UP HERE.

There is also a "helicopter view" discussion overseeing the whole series titled Sellers, Buyers, Marketers, FD's and Bosses; Under one umbrella - helpful if you believe, as we do, that nobody can sell in splendid isolation or that our colleagues are equally pointless, unless a sale is made?

For this and all other recorded webinars currently available on ModernSelling.com, you will need a free download of Windows Media Player - click here.

    Questions & Comments

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    You're all welcome - and it's free!

    Really, it sounds like a war out there, but the truth of the matter is that we desperately need to find out how to work together again.

    So, if you're a seller seeking buyers, buyer trying to find the right sellers, marketer, boss, bean-counter or stuck in the middle somewhere (all your webinars are coming too), please, join in and help us to help ourselves.
    Posted by Neil Warren on

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    Is the Buying the Consumer of the Product/Service?

    I feel that it many cases the disconnect between buyer and seller arises because the buyer isn't necessarily the consumer of the product or service. Across many industries the buyer has been tasked by someone else to source the product or service with a woolly brief, unclear parameters and often a loose idea of budget. They then simply get a best fit based on these terms. If the buyer isn't the consumer then the role of marketing and sales could/should be to understand both buyer and consumer perspectives and needs and facilitate a journey for each of them that gets to a positive and measurable end point.
    Posted by Neil Wilkins on

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    By Jove I think we've cracked it.....

    ....well, perhaps not all of it, but certainly the bit about getting buyers to contact us. I think this primarily comes from getting the website bit right - we can be found easily, buyers tell us the content is good and we receive plenty of inbound leads.

    We recently developed a couple of tools that allow you to perform calculations in relation to absence management (our line of business) and it's amazing to see the increased uptake of these whenever I've been busy on LinkedIn. There's a clear correlation between helpful LI posts and people following through to visit your website.

    Also heartily agree with Neil Wilkins - more often than not I speak to some poor soul who's been tasked with 'gathering info' for the decision makers. We get over this via the old method of 'creating the need' i.e. posing a number of questions that will almost certainly get back to the decision makers and lead them to consider us as a serious player, not just a 'me too!' vendor with the lowest price.
    Posted by Adam Warren on

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    Form filler or decision maker?

    Glad to hear Neil W's point of view here and Adam's perspective. We hit this all the time in Lead Nurturing - the accepted practice is that we should nurture the form filler. Yet they are often some lowlife given the task of researching. Worse still when they are diligent - the visit all the "serious intent" pages, download all the stuff and get themselves qualified as a really hot lead, when all they are doing is preparing a report.

    It shows me a fundamental misunderstanding of what salespeople do in the early stages of buying. They work out whether the person they are talking to is really the decision maker or full of bull. they find out the true seat of power. They fight off the "lies" from competitors. They answer all the "stupid" questions which come up as people evaluate things.

    That's what really got me started on all this buyer stuff. Buyers may research online, but they still find lots of bull, which they now have to make sense of on their own. So how do you help them sort the good from bad, lies from facts and help them make the right decision - for your product, of course?
    Posted by Peter Johnston on

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    Seth Godin on Buyer (and seller) Coordination...

    Coordination

    Our economy is almost entirely based on a Darwinian competition--many products and services fighting for shelf space and market share and profits. It's a wasteful process, because success is unpredictable and unevenly distributed.

    The internet has largely mirrored (and amplified) this competition. eBay, for example, not only pits sellers against one another, it also pits buyers. Craigslist makes it easy for buyers to see the range of products and services on offer, making the marketplace more competitive. Google, most of all, encourages an ecosystem where producers can evolve, improve and compete.

    I think the next frontier of the net is going to use the datastream to do precisely the opposite--to create value by making coordination easier.

    A pre-internet pioneer of this: the method residents are assigned to hospitals after med school...

    The Match -

    http://www.nrmp.org/

    The competitive way to do this is the same way we do college--we tell students to apply to a ton of schools, and perhaps you get into four, perhaps you get into none. Perhaps someone else gets into your favorite and chooses not to go... while you're left behind.

    The Match coordinates instead. You tell the system your favorites, in rank order, and it uses application feedback from the hospitals to maximize the happiness of the largest number of applicants. No sense wasting scarce acceptances on people unable to work in two places at once.

    Consider the way Logos...

    http://www.logos.com/communitypricing/about

    ...is determining which books to bring out. They challenge readers to indicate the most they'd be willing to pay for a particular title, and then, based on the number of people voting with their dollars, can bring out titles at the lowest possible price for the largest number of people.

    In both cases, the system works because it can become aware of buyer preferences in advance. Kickstarter takes this to an extreme, allowing producers to pre-sell items before making them. But this is not nearly as nuanced as it could be, and a lot of effort is wasted in acquiring the attention of potential purchasers.

    Any wasting asset--a restaurant table, a seat at a conference, a wasting box of fish--can be efficiently used instead of wasted if we use technology to identify and coordinate buyers.

    Synchronizing buyers to improve efficiency and connection is a high-value endeavor, and it's right around the corner. It will permit mesh products, better conferences, higher productivity and less waste, while giving significant new power to consumers and those that organize them.

    Posted by Neil Warren on

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    Grand Finale No 7: The Boss's Tale...

    So it may or may not have been The Boss (is that you?) who nailed the first customer or two, and has kept in touch since BUT...

    Is s/he (or are you) helping as much with your current (modern) selling efforts, trying to communicate with buyers and prospects in 2011, 2012, and onwards?

    The Boss's Tale will help you to find out, with seat reservations now open...

    http://www.modernselling.com/news-and-events/webinar-corner/boss-tale-workshop-webinar-discussion-series-neil-warren-jeremy-spiller-20114049.aspx

    ...and some ideas on what you can do, if not.

    Feel free to add your supplementary questions and comments on there too, and bring a "friend" - why not - even if that is The Boss?
    Posted by Neil Warren on

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