¨Selling¨ doesn´t work

Here’s another common example to help convince all of us that selling doesn’t work:

You and your sales team have just entered the customer’s conference room where they have granted you the time you the one-hour meeting time you requested with the key decision maker.  You proudly give the executive a copy of the half-inch thick (35 page!) presentation that you diligently prepared for a time such as this.  Think carefully about the customer executive’s perspective at this point – he or she looks at the sheer size of the presentation materials they see in front of them and they will conclude one or more of the following:

• “We’ll never get through all of these slides in the hour I have allocated – I am going to suffer a “death by PowerPoint” demise!”
• “I certainly can’t ask any questions so I’ll just nod agreeably and hope they finish soon”
• “Better yet, I think I’ll text my assistant, Mary, and ask her to come into the meeting room in 15 minutes to announce that I have been asked to attend an executive meeting that was unplanned!”

You get the picture?  Executives look at the sheer volume of information that we, as sales people tend to throw at them and get overwhelmed at the sight.  I can promise you – what they don’t say to themselves, “I can’t wait to see the next slide!”

If you embrace this notion then, it begs the question: what should I do in the selling process if not sell?  That’s where we’re going with this whole UnSelling concept!  We’ll explore this concept further and I look forward to your experience with selling successfully without really selling.