Connecting: Relationship Selling is Alive and Well!

The Challenger Sale, in 2012,  heralded in a new age of selling, not based upon the relationship/solution selling  model that has become the defacto standard for the last two decades, but rather one that is focused on "challenging" the prospect with "disruptive questions" leading to "insight".  An article, in the summer of 2012, in the Harvard Business Review, announced the "end of solution sales." In the succeeding years sales forces shelved relationship selling and abandoned principles of solution selling.  As Lee Corso is so famous for saying on College Gameday, "not so fast, my friend!"

Books by Linda Richardson, Changing The Sales Conversation: Connect, Collaborate and Close and Mike Schultz and John E. Doerr , Insight Selling : Surprising Research on What Winners Do Differently suggest that we may have been premature in "throwing the baby out with the bathwater."  In fact both   say "connecting" as the first step in selling.  Yes, connecting as in relationships, but instead of relationships based on  mundane tasks such as getting donuts or filling out purchasing forms for buyers the relationships/connections, are based upon value.  Specifically the value that the solution delivers to the individual  customer.  That value is quantified and the risks of solution are mitigated.  Doerr and Schultz suggest that the relationships in relationship selling and in insight selling are formed at different times.  In traditional relationship selling the relationship is made at the beginning. You establish the relationship and then you make the sale.  In insight selling the relation comes after you deliver value.  In other words the relationship is based upon the value you deliver.  Until you deliver value there is no relationship.

This brings us back to Connecting.  In sales today Connecting is the new prospecting.  Instead of prospecting we connect with prospects.  This connection is done through social media and again is based upon the value you deliver.   For more detail regarding this subject please go to my YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stK2sgq_Sik

 My next blog will discuss a strategy for sales people to connect through social media.  Until then "Prepare to win!"