Gap Selling: Getting the Customer to Yes: How Problem-Centric Selling Increases Sales by Changing Everything You Know About Relationships, Overcoming Objections, Closing and Price

by Keenan

I promise you, no one gives a shit about you, your company, or your product.

Selling is a giving profession. Every time you engage with a customer, or send an email, or create something, you have to ask yourself, “What am I giving?”

You’re never selling a product. You’re selling the impact your product will have on your buyer’s current environment. You’re selling change.

Your number one job when selling is to get the customer, buyer, or prospect to let you help them.

If you’re pitching product, prospects will be less willing to let you help them. If the prospect is not being forthright in giving you the information you’re asking for, then they are not letting you help them. You have to fix this before you go any further. If you can’t get buyers to let you help them, the sale is dead.

Other data showed that “early in the sales cycle there is a linear relationship between the number of questions you ask and the likelihood of closing a deal.”

The point of your demo is not to reveal all of your product’s features and functions. It’s to reveal how well your product provides the solution to your buyer’s specific problems.

Every single yes you hear from the customer is a renewed agreement to work with you. If you’re not hearing yes,” you’re not approaching the close.

your emails didn’t get lost in the ether, and your voicemails didn’t disappear. Prospects know when they owe you a response. And most of the time, they feel bad that they haven’t gotten in touch. If they went so far as to tell you they were interested in going forward with the deal and now they’ve disappeared, you can bet they’re not purposely trying to be rude; something has happened on their end that they weren’t anticipating. But getting desperate and begging them to talk to you by “just checking in” isn’t going to prompt them to explain themselves. The next time this happens to you—and it will—don’t become desperate. Instead, be direct.

get creative but avoid gimmickry, and stay problem-centric.

I never, ever, ever say no for a buyer. I make the buyer say no.

If your salespeople cannot gain influence over their deals, they’re not selling; they’re pitching. They haven’t earned the credibility that would strengthen their influence.

More deals are lost, not because the customer didn’t have a problem or set of problems, but because the salesperson didn’t have enough information to effectively influence the deal to close.