Provocation Based Selling

For some reason I keep running into sales analogies that revolve around the digestive system. The current economic climate was discussed in our weekly sales meeting and the term Decision Constipation was used. This is the idea that our current slow economy hasn't stopped sales from happening, but has slowed the decision making process down in a lot of cases. Maybe my sense of humor is a little too sophomoric, but I found the term to be funny but also incredibly accurate.

It seems to me that many of our prospects (and maybe yours) are coming up with excuses to delay making a decision, rather than giving us a yes or a no. Nothing in sales is more frustrating to me than not getting an answer. I can deal a no; it just brings me closer to a yes somewhere else. But a "maybe" or a "need more time" is just a killer.

This brings me to a sales concept that seems to be popping up more and more, Provocation Based Selling. The idea here for us (salespeople) to do a better job finding critical problems in our prospects that we can help solve. Once this problem is uncovered we must find a provocative way to illustrate the true impact of not solving the problem, and communicate this to the true decision maker; in our case that is the owner. They key to this strategy is the need for a critical problem to be present, and for the decision maker to agree that this problem needs to be fixed. This is where great questions and good listening skills will be important.

My take on Provocation Based Selling, is that we need to get better at our jobs to remain successful in this economic climate. I would gather that all salespeople have been trained on finding our prospects needs. The key for success today is making sure we uncover critical problems that we can illustrate the cost if they are not fixed. If there is less money in the budget, the problem needs to be critical in the eyes of the decision maker.

The wallets are tightening, but companies are still spending money. We just need to "provocatively" show our prospects why they need to spend that money with you.

Happy Selling,

K Mason