Three Distinct Stages

I found Jill Konrath post a piece of PR for her upcoming book which suggests that buyers go through three separate mindsets during a deal. What I like about them is that they build on the kind of process-thinking I referred to in my recent Drake Formula For Sales post.

The nuance here, is that they may well be separate, discrete stages. There’s no overlap. Mutually exclusive, a subsequent stage can only begin when its predecessor ends. In addition, the action to which I refer is in her syntax that bedrock of successful solution selling concepts, ‘change’.

In summary it appears her book discusses tactics for each of the three stages, possibly majoring on how you avoid being in a stage 3 pitch frenzy when “90%” of the time, the people you meet are contrarily mired inside stage 2:

1st Decision: Allow Access

2nd Decision: Initiate Change

3rd Decision: Select Resources

What I also like about this framework, is that it should bring home to all sellers that it need never be about your product. If you extrapolate her logic, then it can be easily argued that the longer you can force yourself to stave off mention of any of your bells and whistles, the more likely you are to succeed.