A recorded conversation between Gerhard Schwadner and Troy Harrison focused on one of the five pillars of leadership: acknowledging empowered bias. The discussion centers on how sales must shift from seller-centered processes to buyer-centered journeys (five phases: motivation, investigation, solution, evaluation, decision), how salespeople should think like buyers, and practical tactics for handling multiple stakeholders and timelines. The segment closes with contact information for Troy Harrison and his services.
Questions this video answers
Five (motivation; investigation; solution; evaluation; decision).
troyharrison.com (site includes a button to book a 15-minute consultation).
Chapters
Hi, my name is Gerhard Schwadner and welcome to Selling Power tv. Today we continue our conversation with Troy Harrison and we talk about the five pillars of leadership. And the pillar we want to talk about today is acknowledging empowered bias. Troy, welcome to our series.
Thank you, Gerhardt. Glad to be here.
How should we think about that shift in power dynamics?
We have always talked in the sales world about sales process. What's your sales process? Buyers aren't sitting around out there thinking, boy, I can't wait to call a salesperson be stuffed into their sales process. Buyers are now the stars of the show. And so sales nowadays needs to be configured and centered around the buyer's journey. What are the steps that the buyer, him or herself is going to go through before purchasing something? And how do we interact with that buyer's journey? How do we interact with that buyer to bring it to a successful conclusion? The buyer's journey has five phases. Phase number one is motivation. The buyer feels at a level of dissatisfaction and they see a desired future state. They see a place that they want to get to. That's step one, motivation. Step two is investigation. Okay, now that I know I have a problem, what is my problem exactly? What are my needs? Let's define those needs. Let's figure out what that desired future state is, what my definition of success is before we move on to the next. Third step is solution. I know what my needs are, what products or services are out there that are going to solve my problem. Number four is evaluation. What's it going to cost me? Where can I get it? Are the terms acceptable? Can I afford it? Does it represent good value? Then finally is decision. Do I buy or not? This is so important that in the last year I've rewritten my entire training system around this concept because salespeople now we're going to add to the sales skill sets. And one of the biggest skills that salespeople have to have now is the ability to mentally put themselves on the other side of the desk and think like their customers, think like their buyers and give things a smell test. Does this make sense to me if I were the buyer, not the salesperson? Now a salesperson has a role in every step in that buyer's journey. Motivation. Good prospecting skills can instill motivation and get a buyer into their buyer's journey. That's where they initiate the investigation phase. We have a great opportunity to ask great questions that maybe the buyer hasn't even thought of to help them define their needs in the solution spot. That's obvious. We present Our solutions in such a way that connote the advantages and show the buyer how we can get them to that desired future state. Step four, Evaluation Price and terms. That's where we offer a simple, easy to understand proposal and then decision. Do we ask for the sale? Yes, we still do. So a lot of those old sales skills cross anger, but there are new sales skills that have to be added and some new thought processes, some paradigms that have to be added to be able to think like your buyer and help navigate the buyer through their own buyer's journey. 25 years ago, we were starting the buyer's journey at the beginning because most of the time our buyers didn't know anything. Now that's not the case most of the time, particularly when the buyer reaches out to us, they're partway through that buyer's journey before they ever talk to us. So that's another sales skill that salespeople must have. They've got to have the ability to respectfully find out where the buyer is in their journey and what they've done and give it the quick smell test and say, okay, has the buyer received accurate information or inaccurate information? And if they have, how do we, tactfully, in a non insulting fashion, get them to a correct position of information? And once you begin thinking in that paradigm, I really believe that selling to the modern, more informed, more educated, more savvy buyer gets a lot easier.
There's one more complexity we need to talk about. How do you suggest that sales leaders prepare their team dealing with multiple buyers?
Here's the question asked. Could you describe the decision making process that will be used for this purchase? Process is such an important word. What you're asking them is lay out the steps for me of how this is going to be done. And you're not saying, are you the decision maker? You are making it safe for them to say, well, there's going to be a committee involved or I take the information to my boss. Because they're not insulting themselves by saying, I have to get other people involved in this.
We are talking about buying journey and we use sort of an analogy that this is a straight line. How do you identify where the buyer is located? Because sometimes the journey is a maze.
I believe you simply ask simply, indirectly, what this looks like. And one of my favorite questions to ask is a time frame question. Again, this is one that a lot of salespeople do wrong because they ask, okay, when do you plan on placing this order? When do you plan on making this purchase? Here's problem with that. When Somebody buys something, when do they want to have it? Right away. A lot of the times, particularly in B2B sales, that's not possible. So the best question to ask is when do you want to begin using this item? Ask about implementation. And that also helps them visualize the implementation, which is also a positive. And then when they give you a day, say, okay, walk me through the steps that are going to happen between now and then. And you can backfill them and say, okay, if you need this on November 1st, then I need the order by October 1st. So what do we have to do to make that happen?
Where can people find you and how you prepare to help them?
People can get a hold of me. Look me up@troy harrison.com or there's a button where you can book a 15 minute consultation with me where we can get the process started and we can figure out how. I can help you, but I can help sales leaders. I can train their salespeople, I can train sales managers and leaders. I can assist with hiring. I do long term coaching packages that include sales team assessments and also bundle in all these other pieces. So whatever you need about building a more powerful sales team, I can help you do it.
And you have done it for over 20 years. So I recommend you click on the button below, go to Troy harrison.com thank you so much.
