Last week I was in Hong Kong delivering sales training to the APAC division of a major software company. The executive who hired me had requested two things:
- He wanted a strategic sales process that would gain buy-in from reps from different countries and cultures throughout their world-wide sales organization.
- He also wanted a process that was not complicated. His goal was to get everyone on the same page around a simple model, because his experience had been that if the model was too complex, sales people don’t adopt it.
This executive’s request reinforced for me the reasons why I developed my 8-step sales- model that closely ties actions a sales rep should take with customer needs during the buying process. While cultures certainly differ around the globe, the process that human beings go through when contemplating major decisions is the same everywhere: Customers have to know what’s at risk if they change, and what’s at risk if they don’t change. They will be happier with their choice after the purchase if they have carefully thought through all of their needs, and if they can justify why purchasing from you would be better than purchasing from your competitors.
The better a salesperson understands that their customer’s buying behavior should influence their selling behavior, the more successful they will be. Having a simple model they can refer to makes it easy for them to put that principle into action.
Kevin Davis
