Something Old and Something New!, Prospecting with Insight!

I'm sure many of you have heard that: " prospecting is now old fashioned you and should instead be "connecting" through social media."  I don't know about you, but I have a blog, a Twitter account and a presence on LinkedIn and new business is not exactly breaking down my door.  The bottom line is prospecting or if you want "connecting" is still a basic fundamental discipline of effective selling.  I was reminded of this as I listened to the In The Arena podcast of  S.Anthony Iannarino where he interviewed Mike Weinberg  the author of New Sales. Simplified. which was published by AMACOM  in 2013.

Mr. Weinberg is known for being a hunter and he reminded me of some old  truths and simple practices to find new business.  Key among them is Prospecting.  He reminded me of the very simple discipline required of every successful seller.  I had recently fallen into the the trap of blaming a lack of marketing for my lack of new business.  What really was wrong was that I had not blocked time to work on getting the business from the prospects I had prioritized and researched.

So I recommend that you read Mr. Weinberg's book  But then there is the still "something new" that I think you should use to supplement Mr. Weinberg's sage advice.  In your prospecting I recommend you take full advantage of social media.  That you should research your prospects, their industry, their company and their role to discover what insight you can bring to their business, that they did not heretofore know,  and that can help their business.  To assist you I suggest you read Changing the Sales Conversation: Connect, Collaborate and Close 2015  published by McGraw Hill  and authored by Linda Richardson. She does a particularly good job of showing how to create "insight-led' questions that can help you in your discovery without subjecting your prospect to "questioning fatigue."

To whet your appetite, before committing to buy the books you may want to check out S. Anthony Iannarino's podcast In The Arena.  In separate episodes he speaks to both authors.
http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/anthony-iannarino/in-the-arena

Episode 25 Mike Weinberg, New Sales. Simplified.
Episode 39 Linda Richardson, Changing The Sales Conversation: Connect, Collaborate, Close

Beyond the Challenger Sale

Just when we thought "solution selling" and "relationship selling" were "dead" new research by the RAIN Group collected in the book Insight Selling: Surprising Research on What sales Winners Do Differently has proved differently: Since 2012 and the publishing of the Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation  and the subsequent article in the Harvard Business Review proclaiming the death of Solution Selling many companies have re-thought their sales development.  For years they practiced solution selling, consultative sales and relationship building and now all of a sudden these techniques and practices were in question?  Many companies, it turns out, rightfully so, did not throw the baby out with the bath water and abandon these practices.  What we did learn from the Challenger is that delivering "Insight" is key for the salesperson and relationships, not based upon value,  no longer worked. We also learned  customer needs identification based upon a dialogue of multiple questions was not working.  Customers were experiencing  "questioning fatigue."   The Challenger also taught us that the client relies upon the salesperson  teach (a special type of teaching the Challenger calls commercial teaching).

Now in 2014 we have learned more, the effective salesperson of the future has continued to evolve. Work by Linda Richardson (Changing The Sales Conversation: Connect, Collaborate,  Close) and Mike Schultz and John E. Doerr (Insight Selling: Surprising  Research on What Sales Winners Do Differently) have shown us how to "create" insight, reassured us of the value of relationships and given some techniques to conduct a needs dialogue without putting the client in "question fatigue" and suggestions for "teaching" or "convincing" the clients.

Both of these books are very practical and provide resources to help you engage in this new type of selling and you should read them!  However, below I have included a link to  Anthony Iannarino's  "In the Arena Podcast"  in Episode 40 he interviews Linda Richardson about her book, Changing The Sales Conversation and in Episode 35 he interviews Mike Schultz in regards to his book Insight Selling.  Both of these are about 30 minutes long and provide a great window into the books.

http://thesalesblog.com/blog/category/in_the_arena_podcast/