During the Christmas holidays I read “Lost in a sea of sameness”, a very interesting white paper from Danheiser, Kelly and Johnston regarding the lack of differentiation in the telecommunications industry.
Whenever we go to a doctor once we are faced with a health issue, he/she asks about the symptoms that we have, about our medical history, or even about our habits, prior to proceeding with the examination itself.
How many times have we all been inside a shop looking around, not sure if we are going to buy or not, when a salesperson approaches us asking: “May I help you?”, only to get from us the most typical answer: “No thank you, I’m just looking!”
From all the stages of the Sales Cycle, Closing was always considered to be the most crucial and the one that every salesperson is taught to concentrate his/her efforts. There are dozens of books written about it and even more closing techniques available that claim to guarantee 100% results.
Every now and then, we all find ourselves stepping onto the scale, but most of the times we don’t like what we see. How great it would be if we could stand there and just by commanding “Lower!”, the number would immediately obey and do as it is told to. Regrettably, this doesn’t happen in real life, as this is a metric that is beyond our control.