What has changed in selling?
The more important question is “what hasn’t” changed in selling.
What hasn’t changed is more important to results than all the new technology and tools now available.
Scott Channell addressed these issues on a segment of his appearance on the Marketer of the day with Robert Plank podcast.
Video of this segment and transcript is below.
Video and transcript of full podcast is here.
Transcript – lightly edited
Scott Channell: [00:00:00] And I think you raised a great point when you talk about we don’t want to be too pushy. And in fact, I think that’s one of the mindsets of people who. Are very capable of selling more, but aren’t selling more because they feel like, oh, I don’t wanna be salesy.
Oh, I don’t wanna push. Someone may not like this. So they don’t ask the direct questions. They don’t go deeper. They’re afraid to hear a no. So they don’t inquire about competitors or they’re afraid to contrast themselves with competitors. You’ve gotta be always driven by what works. Now what’s comfortable for you?
Okay, so people get real comfortable saying, oh, I don’t wanna be too salesy. People don’t like that. But the issue is what helps the buyers, what is in the buyer’s interest? And many times because people are not willing to be direct, they confuse being direct and prepared, being prepared and direct with being pushy.
And that is not the two different things. Two.
Robert Plank: Okay, so how can we be [00:01:00] prepared and direct without all the usual mistakes?
Scott Channell: One of the things I think is to realize, although many things have certainly changed in sales. I, did this stuff when dinosaurs walked the earth. And the technology’s changed and certainly the competitive environment has changed, but I think it’s important to focus on what hasn’t changed.
Technology or automations you’re using, or how sophisticated your program is, at the core, you still have to hit the right audience, right? If you don’t, if you’re not focused on, if you don’t know what the bullseye looks like and stay pretty darn close to it your program’s gonna fail.
And then also. You have to interact with somebody, whether it’s a cold prospect or maybe a warm prospect in your pipeline. There’s a certain method to the madness of interaction that’s sufficient and things that are insufficient. And then obviously when you know, you have to have something to say.
One of the things that always amazes me is when people have [00:02:00] underperforming programs and they talk to me, I’m always surprised at how people who. Have all these successes and have these great stories and proofs about, the outcomes that they deliver people. And yet when push comes to shove they’re not expressing those things.
So you gotta hit the right audience. You’ve gotta interact with them the right way. You have to show up saying the best things that hasn’t changed. And the other thing I’ll tell you is I find that. The biggest leaps I have found in terms of results changing quickly, the biggest successes come not from all the fancy, sexy stuff, the fun stuff, okay?
It comes from getting the foundations right, making, cutting down your list to highest probability targets and, following through on your well thought out process and following up correctly. The greatest leaps that I have seen in my career come about from companies recalibrating their basics and getting those things [00:03:00] right, more so than adding fancy stuff on top of that.
You can’t add automations and technology on top of a broken system. That’s not gonna get you good results. You’ve gotta have those foundations. So that hasn’t changed at all.
