Peter Strohkorb is a Sales Acceleration Specialist Advisor. He helps mid-market businesses and their owners how to sell more and sell faster. His critical advice is to advise clients to stop focusing on what they are selling and how they want to sell and to start focusing on how their buyers want to buy. The approach is called the buyer-focused sales cycle.

Peter has spent more than 20 years in the corporate world and he has learnt everything about what not to do in the sales function. Specifically, do not jump out of the bushes and hit the client up with product features and a sales pitch. Nobody likes to receive spam emails or unsolicited or cold calls.

Do not “pitch slap” your contacts.

How can we make the buying process more pleasant for the buyer?

Salespeople are under a lot of pressure (coming from their organisation’s superiors) to hit the sales target. Towards the end of the quarter, there is increased pressure to close the deal. However, buyers do not like to be pressured. Buyers want to be guided to an informed buying decision. Sellers need to advise more and sell less.

Seller behaviour is determined by how they are trained and measured.

Sales professionals are now doing a lot of remote selling. Some non-verbal queues can be missed but the sales processes are, fundamentally, unchanged. Humans are still buying from humans.

The old skills are the new skills but need to be applied more professionally. Specifically:

· Ask questions about the customer’s challenge

· Do homework before engaging, so time is not wasted on fundamental questions.

· Engage in a more personal level

· Have something which will intrigue so that the customer leans forward and engages

The personal piece is injected into the interactions by injecting a personal touch.

E.g. “How are you doing in the pandemic?”

Focus on the customer needs and the problem that needs solving. Be an advisor to the customer.

https://peterstrohkorb.com/sales-acceleration