This week’s travels took me to several different states for deliveries and meetings with clients 
regarding their business challenges. One of the things that I try to do as a time and project management discipline – and also as fodder for my blogs – is to review my notes and observations from these interactions with clients to look for patterns and weak signals of potential disruption.
A significant and clear pattern emerged this week and it involves the way organizations sell in 2017 and beyond.
“The day of the tradeshow, steak dinner, and tickets to a sporting event are over” shared one of my close executives who runs a multi-billion organization. “Selling is so different right now and people don’t get it. I especially know my people don’t get it and it is impacting our ability to manage strategic accounts and grow revenue.”
As an immediate result of this conversation, I started to think about and talk to sales professionals about some of the basic and foundational challenges and opportunities that are presenting themselves in the selling process. We came up with 3 quick and critical things to remember about selling in the digital age:
Prospects are really busy!
“Well I sent the prospect an email and he didn’t respond.” I can’t tell you how many times a day in our sales training practice we hear this from participants. Of course they are not writing back; they are really busy! Between cutbacks in staff, the 24/7 day, and the increased pressure to perform, potential customers are focused on too many tasks and aren’t going to respond to one email. It is critical to understand that it’s not personal and that prospects are struggling to survive and get through each day. Your job as a sales professional is to understand, recognize, and empathize with your prospect’s situation.
Critical Tip: You are no longer selling a product or service. You are selling a connection. In order to cut through the clutter and gain time and mindshare, you need to figure out ways of making your connection a priority. LinkedIn, physical networking events, and personal referrals are the only ways to gain a prospect’s attention.
You are selling connections
As I mentioned above, you are no longer selling products and services to customers; you are selling connections to customers. The connection to the customer is the gateway to revenues and profits. But what does that look like? In addition to the personal connections through digital selling tools, organizations must also focus their awareness strategies and information strategies to sophisticated customers who will search the internet for ideas and data for products and services that meet their needs and will then look for a solution – levering technology – to acquire the solution.
Critical Tip: Look at your entire value proposition through the lenses of your prospects. Think about and look at what they are seeing and ask yourself this important question: “Is what they are seeing providing the ability to create a connection that first provides the information and then provides the gateway to revenues.
The value proposition has to be clear and concise
It is not a secret that the attention span of a prospect in the digital age of selling is about the equivalent of a Tweet. Basically we have about 140 characters to get the message of a value proposition to a prospect. That means the value proposition has to be clear and concise.
Critical Tip: Spend time working on a value proposition message that can be delivered quickly and efficiently. Here is an example of a 140 character value proposition statement:
