Salespeople are under tremendous pressure these days to sell more and sell faster. Many sales managers harp on salespeople to close more deals, and push the customer along faster and faster.
But what matters isn’t what we are doing in our sales process. It’s what the customer is doing in their buying process.
Ironically, that means the key to speeding up the sales process is to actually slow down each sales conversation. Salespeople have to take time to get in sync with the customer’s buying process early on, to adopt the perspective that their job is not to push for the sale, but to help customers buy.
Working closely with customers through each step of their buying process gives salespeople a clear advantage over their competitors. So instead of urging salespeople to move faster, managers should be helping them focus on what customers need to learn and do at each step of buying.
