Are you involved in a complex sale with multiple decision makers? If so, they probably don't make decisions too often with regards to what you sell. When you're dealing with today's crazy-busy prospects, the decision itself can be overwhelming.

They may not have all the right people involved. They may not fully understand everything that has to be taken into consideration. They might not know how to differentiate from the competitors. They may not understand how to put together a business case to justify the decision. They may not include all the right info in an RFP.

But you know all this stuff. That's why it's important for you to stop selling and focus on helping facilitate the decision process itself. Find out what's prevented them from solving the problem before. Or, you could share a road map that outlines the steps that people need to go through to make a decision -- and who needs to be involved. And, if you notice things that they're missing, have a frank conversation about it. Tell them know how your other customer dealt with the decision.

Don't push your product or service. Instead, help. I mean it. This about helping your customers make the best possible decision for their business. If this is your intent, they'll feel it. When you're a decision guide, people trust you and will want to work with you. It's that simple.

The Challenger Sale Momentum

The Challenger Selling concept is gaining in popularity based on the number of people joining the LinkedIn Group, the rank of The Challenger Sale book, (currently #2 in Amazon sales and marketing category) and the references to the book on the Internet.

Last week we saw a spat between sales training profesionals in one of the LinkedIn groups, about the veracity of the Challenger model, caused no doubt by the mindshare "Challenger" is generating in the market at the expense of rival approaches.

The Challenger behavior archetype identified in The Challenger Sale research stands out because Challengers produce better results than any other sales behavior type selling complex B2B products and services. Why? Because these individuals bring insight and informed opinion to influence the thinking of buyers and they exert a degree of control on the outcome of a complex B2B buying process.

When do Challengers engage in the Buying Process? 

I was asked this question yesterday by the SVP of a major information services company in conversation about the difficulty of selling a B2B product and services against strong competition in 2012. While I am not affiliated in any way with the CEB, I offered the following.

When Mies Van Der Rohe embraced “less is more” as his guiding principle he spawned a school of architecture that espouses simplicity, refinement, and utility. There are those among us who believe the same idea holds true for content. Even in the comparatively humdrum world of business, we like to think of ourselves as artists dedicated to producing high quality work stripped to the essentials to deliver value in the simplest terms possible. This ideal contrasts sharply with what I term the baroque school — writers who pack blogs willy-nilly with content’s equivalent of flying buttresses, architraves and ceiling frescoes.

Just such a post, by a HubSpot writer, crossed my screen this week. One of the larger inbound marketing firms, HubSpot is known for promoting its wares through a high volume content strategy best characterized as pure excess. This particular post, titled “7 Reasons Agile Marketers Are Better at Their Jobs Than You,” caught my eye, and I was drawn in to determine whether I was sufficiently agile in HubSpot’s view. Alas, I do not make the grade. Nonethless I’m convinced my way of doing things — with an emphasis on precision and simplicity — is hands down nimbler than HubSpot’s.

Cyrus McCormick—best known for having invented the first mechanical reaper in 1833—was actually not the first. That honor went to Obed Hussey, who announced construction of his reaper a year before McCormick patented his in 1834. So while the argument can be made that McCormick didn’t actually invent the reaper, what’s clear is that McCormick invented the business of selling reapers to farmers from all over the world. Most people today see this business angle as even more innovative than the actual invention itself.

According to Cyrus McCormick biographer Herbert Newton Casson, there were four keys to the success of McCormick’s growing business:

First, he gave his customers a written guarantee with every machine and “warranted the performance of the machine in every respect.” He did this by charging the customer—typically, a farmer—$80 up front, with the balance due in six months on the condition that the reaper would cut one and a half acres an hour, that it would scatter less grain than existing methods, and that the raking off could be done from a raker’s seat. If the reaper failed to fulfill these promises, the customer could return it and have his down payment refunded. The idea of giving a free trial and returning the money to any dissatisfied customers was at the time a new and revolutionary policy.