Check Solution Belief

Small business information for the entrepreneur. That’s how America’s Inc. pitches itself. They have a section devoted to sales. Unfortunately, it leans towards the kind of vagueisms that the rest of its articles steadfastly avoid. Rather than hear fourth and fifth person lists of what works, I prefer the kind of angle they usually deploy when taking real-life stories ahead of desktop opinions. (Take for instance these insights into running a cupcake shop).

Still, how can you ignore clicking on a title such as How to Close a Sale – Here are some strategies to help create a win-win business relationship of customer satisfaction and longevity? Although frustratingly shorn of any proper examples, sales trainer Jeff Thull outlines his four step process (Discovery, Diagnosis, Design & Delivery) including a neat summary from the ‘diagnosis’ stage of the two major reasons why you fail to sell;

• They do not believe they have the problem the solution will solve (which includes thinking the problem is not big enough to require a change).
• They do not believe the solution will work.

I don’t buy this in its entirety (for instance, he cites a subset of point one, but none for point two when there are surely several for each, and crucially also ignores the ever-present underlying impact of reaction to ‘change’), nevertheless it is a worthy sanity check for your current bid.