Over the last couple of weeks due to the sudden changes driven by the coronavirus / Covid-19, we’ve spoken to hundreds of sales people and we’ve been asked the same question again and again:
“Everything’s changed. I can’t sell what I normally sell. What should I be selling instead?”
In this post I want to explain why this is the wrong question to be asking right now and share an alternative, more impactful approach.
“What should I be selling?” is the wrong question to ask because of a sales challenge that’s been around for a long time- a challenge that the current situation is accentuating. The challenge is that clients have never been particularly interested in what we sell. Not least because, for them, everything sounds the same. In fact, according to the CEB, 86% of buyers don’t see a big enough difference between what you’re selling and what your closest competitor is selling to pay a premium or to advocate for it.
What they have always cared about is finding solutions to the problems that they’re facing. Arguably, that is way more important today than it’s ever been before so we shouldn’t start by asking “What should I be selling?” Instead, we should follow this three step process:
“What should I be selling right now?” is an understandable question for sales people to be asking now but it’s not where we should start.
We are continuing to update our free resources so find out more sales tips on our You Tube channel and look at our Sales Chat videos where we cover key topics with industry professionals.