Here’s a counterintuitive idea for the corporate world: empathy sells.

A coaching client of mine, an excellent salesman, told me he was feeling nervous about a sale. He was in the final stages, and the client had narrowed it down to his company and a competitor. They offered essentially the same services, and my friend’s services were marginally more expensive—so how could he be sure that he would win the deal?

Do your SDRs prospect senior decision makers whose job it is to introduce change – or into mid-level executives whose job is to execute on already decided initiatives? Can they create budget, or are they assigned a budget by someone with more authority?

Here’s my story. Read it and take the lesson for your own sales team.

In today’s hyper-competitive market, what are your new business sales hunters doing differently to accelerate your sales cycle and improve your win rates?

If they’re anything like the growth leaders I work with, they’re making sure their salespeople are prospecting to and speaking with the person who can say yes to what you sell – the ultimate decision maker: the CEO or their designated senior executive.

In his article https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-does-finding-new-client-take-so-damned-long-martin-e-stevens/ Martin E. Stevens raises the question if the SDR/BDR funstion has had it’s day.

The most successful sales people that I’ve met or coach do something really well that separates them from the rest of their average performing peers. They are masters of asking CLARIFICATION questions. Clarification questions elevate sales conversations to Jedi level.

The very act of asking a good clarification questions creates value for the buyer and connects them at an emotional level with the seller. Here’s how.

nd, it’s because YOU haven’t had a “case for change” conversation with them – where you’ve coached the buyer to articulate THEIR business case and personal win.

Fellow speaker and advisor Noah Fleming wrote an article recently about how buyers can reject investing in their business even when it is clearly in their best interest, because they’re focused on the Input (Cost, Hours) instead of the Output ($ Impact, Outcomes, Results, Hitting Goals). You can read the article here.

Curiosity. On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 is not good…10 is world class), how would you rate the “curiosity” of your salespeople?

If it’s below 7, keep reading.

CEOs and SALES LEADERs: if, as research firms suggest, 53% of sales reps are not hitting quota, this is a LEADERSHIP issue. 2 suggestions…

Originally posted on April 28th on Selling Power Magazine’s Sales 2.0 blog. http://www.sales20conf.com/blog/time-stop-dehumanizing-customers-language/

Words have power. How you, as a company leader and sales leader, talk about your potential customers has a tremendous impact on your growth results – because how you talk about customers will be how your sales people talk to your customers.

In my work consulting and copywriting Executive Access emails, letters and Inmails for B2B new business sales teams all over the world, I see one common omission made by experienced sales people and those new to new business prospecting* – that significantly reduces the effectiveness of their prospecting messages.

Last week on a trip to the Middle East, I conducted an Executive Access! workshop for a combined group of inside sales, field sales and marketing people.

I was struck by how many participants stood up to take pictures of the graphic above – which summarizes the core motivations of functional and strategic executives and their ability to spend/buy.

I’m reposting these stats again as they make for sobering reading.

58% of sales opportunities end in “no decision” – Sales Benchmark Index

Only 54% of sales people made quota in 2015 – CSO InsghtsOnly 46.3% of forecasted deals closed in 2015 – Rob Jeppsen

22% increase in average sales cycle in last 5 years – Dave Borrelli, Salesforce

Could buying personas be partially responsible for declining sales performance?

Interested to see how many of you have been taught value proposition and message development like the examples above?

You’ve hired some great sales people…

…then why can’t they get meetings with decision making executives?

The latest research from neuroscience and cognitive psychology show that sales people with a growth mindset are happier and sell 38% more than their fixed mindset peers according to Gerhard Gschwandtner, CEO of Selling Power magazine.

58% of sales opportunities end in “no decision.” – Sales Benchmark Index

Only 54% of sales people made quota in 2015. – CSO Insights

Only 46.3% of forecasted deals closed in 2015 – Rob Jeppsen

In interviews with B2B executives and sales leaders, many point to the fact that opportunities they should have won but were lost, was due to the fact that the decision maker wasn’t engaged in the buying process.

I’m a supporter of LinkedIn for sales. There’s no better resource for finding information about the people that you want to engage and prospect into. I was one of the first to use LinkedIn as a sales tool when it was first launched in the UK…when dinosaurs roamed…

There’s an unhealthy meme in the sales training industry right now. It says that sales training doesn’t work.

In many cases this may be true – that it doesn’t drive behaviour change or lead to immediate increased sales results.

Unless you’ve been buried under a rock for the last couple of years, you’ll be familiar with the term “social selling.”

Social selling is the sales person’s equivalent of buyers’ web researching and being 69% down their buying decision cycle (or whatever stat is being touted this week).