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4 min read

The art of making tea - a lot like making a good sales call

By Mark Gibson on Feb 16, 2022 12:00:00 AM

Making a great cup of tea has nothing to do with making a sales call, does it?

Drinking a great cup of tea has a lot to do with the daily enjoyment of life and like many things worth doing, it requires an appropriate set of tools, a process and it takes time to achieve the desired result. So does making a great sales call - doesn't it? 

Topics: communication
4 min read

Selling from Home - Here's an Updated Sales Communications Setup

By Mark Gibson on Oct 27, 2021 11:23:06 AM

If you are in sales or consulting, live in the USA or Canada and work most of the time from home, you might find the following article on setting up high quality sales communication system worth the time it takes to read.

Topics: sales communication
3 min read

The Magic of Rapport and Empathy to Connect with Buyers

By Mark Gibson on Oct 27, 2021 11:23:06 AM

I subscribe to the New Scientist magazine because each week articles are published from the fields of pyschology, neuroscience and behavioral science on the understanding of human behavior.

Topics: book review communication
2 min read

SaaS Selling Skill - Reversing the Security Question

By Mark Gibson on Sep 11, 2009 12:00:00 AM

If you are selling, marketing or supporting SaaS solutions, the number one buyer concern and a question that will come up in every conversation is "how do you handle security?"

Nothing short of excellence is required in handling this question - but before you can answer it, you need to reverse it to figure out where the buyer is coming from.

Buyers often ask surface-structure questions, which conceal their underlying concerns either consciously or unconsciously and if we don't reverse them, they often reappear later in the sale as objections. The following Flash illustration is excerpted from the Advanced Marketing Concepts, Selling in the Internet Age eLearning course and may take a few seconds to load. 


Reversing is a linguistic concept and one of the most important concepts for sales, marketing and customer-facing support people to master. Anyone familiar with the Sandler selling method will be very familiar with reversing.
Reversing enables us to understand the buyer's context or underlying reason for their question prior to giving an answer by simply answering their question with a question.

We are trained in school and by our parents to answer whatever question we are asked to the best of our ability, unfortunately in sales and in customer-facing support roles, this can create many difficulties, unless we understand the context of the buyer’s question.

In customer-facing roles, whether in sales, marketing or technical support, the most important question you will ever ask is the one you ask to reverse a prospects question...same applies for managers and executives.

Marketers and sellers on Webinars please take note: Reversing is critical when handling Q&A in front of an audience or in a live Webinar…we have all witnessed sales, marketing and technical people digging holes for themselves in front of large groups by answering what they thought was the buyers question; - only to get completely sidetracked and potentially irritating the buyer, certainly wasting valuable audience time.

Reversing is a Salescraft skill and like most valuable sales skills it takes deliberate practice to master. We need to get into the habit of reversing around the office and with our loved ones until it becomes ingrained.

There is probably no other language technique that will provide such a dividend as reversing. Simple to learn, but needs practice - please take the time and effort to master this discipline.

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Topics: Saas communication