The Evolving Selling Mentality

To succeed, you need to interpret what the client tells you, and often educate your customer about what's out there.

Being a successful salesperson today involves you in collaboration, facilitation, and a sense of partnership with your customer. Long gone are the days of one-way persuasion -- the canned pitch is considered the lowest level of selling. Ideas about selling have evolved rapidly as globalization and fast communication have produced more savvy and demanding buyers. Selling reflects wider changes in business and today goes far beyond pushing product, embracing an understand of how organizations work, management structures, psychology, and self-awareness.

In the past, a salesperson could get by through eloquently telling the customer everything he or she knew about their product, and explaining why their company was the best in its field. This approach may still win you business today in some areas, but most customers now demand much more from their salespeople. they expect them to add value to their business -- to understand fully their needs and to offer up solutions to problems they didn't even realize they had. To succeed, you need to interpret what the client tells you, and often educate your customer about what's out there. Then you need to mesh together the abilities of your organization with that of the client for the benefit of both. You need a measure of curiosity and good listening skills to uncover what the client really needs. and you must be a brilliant innovator, with the ability to think creatively and manage creative processes that find answers.

ACTION POINT: Don't limit yourself to thinking about only your products and services -- your customers need your creativity to help solve their problems.