There was an experiment where two people sat on opposite sides of a desk looking at a ball suspended between them.

They were asked to describe the colour of the ball.

One said “blue”, the other said “red”.

They were then asked to reach agreement on the colour of the object.

The argument progressed for some time and became very heated. Neither side giving way on their stance.

At no time did either of the protagonists offer to come around to the ‘other side’ of the desk and see the problem from the other person’s point of view.

If they had they would have discovered that one side of the ball was coloured red, and the other blue.

The problem did not arise from the object or situation being considered but entirely from the points of view of the observers.

You and I will notice that the observers, through not observing properly, and not considering all points of view, quickly ‘took sides’ and became protagonists.

You and I are also aware that this unfortunate human trait is happening all the time and in all situations.

It’s happening now, it’s happened in the past, and it will continue to happen in the future.

I believe it’s probably quite fair to say that you and I aren’t immune from this habit either. We all do it – to some extent or another.

You see – it’s one of those things we’ve been trained to do. To see things and situations in a particular way and from a particular point of view.

To see things in ‘black and white’ – or red and blue.

That ‘point of view’ will have been strongly influenced by our parents and teachers own points of view: political, religious, ethnic, national, cultural, or whatever – and of course, ‘all of the above’!

It’s rare that parents and teachers together actually encourage children to develop their own point of view but when this does happen the ‘inevitable’ conflict as children approach adulthood tends not to occur, or only takes place on a very minor level.

What usually happens is that, as they grow older, young adults either completely oppose or reject their parents/teachers principles, or adopt them but become more extreme in rejecting anyone else’s point of view.

Either way most people seem to be becoming more and more extreme in their opinions; more and more unwilling to look at the coin from both sides (and the edge as well), instead fixing their view and opinions on just one side.

“The ball is read and you are a liar” – “No, you are the liar, the ball is blue”.

How many times have you and I heard, seen, or read that discussion in the last few weeks?

The thing is, that when you and I get dragged back into these paradigms of ‘one side of the coin’ thinking we’re missing a trick, missing an opportunity.

You and I do ‘look at the other side’ to discover that there may or may not be something there for us.

The grass on the other side may be greener, but it may be fake. But at least, unlike others you and I take the trouble to check it out, see for ourselves, listen to what people on the ‘other side’ have to say.

It may not be for us, and it could even sometimes be dangerous, but at least it gives you and I a better and more informed point of view.

Remember though that from time to time you and I may be ‘right’ in what we think say and do; but to others, who haven’t seen our point of view, you and I are ‘just wrong’!

When you and I see the world from their point of view it helps us understand ours, and their view of us. Only then can we start to interact.

You and I must make the first move because otherwise there’s no persuading them to even consider looking at the situation from our point of view.

“You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine”

Point of view that is  . . .

The death sentence on traditional 20^th century transactional ‘hit and run’ sales was pronounced soon after the millennium fireworks were over.

Admittedly the ‘trial’ had been going on a long while and the sentence is still subject to appeal by those companies who are unable to grasp the inevitable demise of their tenuous grasp on control of the sales process.

The fact is that the control has shifted to the ‘0ther side’.

The buyers, purchasers, potential customers and clients, who old school sales people loved to give the demeaning title ‘prospects’, have finally been given the tools that put them in charge.

Sir Tim Berners Lee’s ‘world wide web’ had begun to mature and more importantly become rapidly and easily available to the ‘consumers’ – both companies and the general public.

Suddenly it was no longer essential or even necessary for you and I to engage with a ‘salesman’ in order to undertake the buying process.

Once you and I become aware of our need or want for something – and our awareness now comes from marketing, not sales activity – you and I no longer have to interface with a ‘salesman’ to carry out our information search.

You and I are now easily able ‘in the comfort of our own homes’ to evaluate our options without in each case having to consult ‘salesmen’ who were never going to give us an unbiased opinion about our choices.

But here’s the thing.

You and I sometimes need help to make our final buying decision. It can be a little scary deciding on our own; especially if the purchase is important to us or we’re buying for a company.

This is where ‘new sales’ comes in.

You see, you and I still need someone to help in our decision making and more importantly someone to go to after the purchase.

You and I need to be confident in our purchase, confident that we’ve done the right thing, and confident that there will be someone that we know at ‘the other end’ to help us out.

As purchasers, you and I need and want a relationship with a real person who knows about what we’ve just bought and the company we’ve bought it from.

Most of all though that person needs to know about us and why we purchased from them in particular.

This is what 21^st century sales, ‘new sales’ is all about – creating a relationship with the purchaser, because the reality is that if you and I, as sales people, get this right those buyers won’t go away; they’ll come back to us again and again.

Remember Drucker’s definition of the purpose of a business?

“To find and keep customers”.

Marketing will find the customers.

It’s up to you and I as ‘new sales practitioners’ to create the relationship that keeps them.

What’s needed now is for companies and sales managers to re-focus away from rewarding their sales staff on the number or volume of sales they make each month and towards giving the ‘top achiever’ awards based on the lifetime value of a sales person’s personal customer portfolio.

And at the same time, they need to stop destroying the relationships created by the ‘front line’ sales staff and handing new customers over to faceless ‘account managers’ or ‘customer service’ departments, where there is no relationship on either side.

It will require different ways of working but if companies really want to keep their customer base then they will have to change the way they do things.

Monthly ‘targets’ have their place but if these customers don’t stay they won’t add to the more important cumulative sales and overall company growth.

‘Sales’ is no longer an end in itself, it’s what happens after the purchase decision has been made that matters.

Whether they are employed working for someone else, self employed, have their own business or just invest money in other enterprises everyone provides something that other people want or need.

You and I are in the business of providing – providing something, a product or service, that someone else wants or needs

And they, in return, will provide something that you and I need or want.

‘Back in the day’ this used to be quite simple.

I might keep chickens and provide you with foodstuffs in exchange for you providing me with cloth that you’d woven.

Or you might be a landowner and provide me with accommodation in return for labour.

You and I might go to ‘market’ and exchange one thing for another – and if I didn’t have anything that you wanted or needed I might give you ‘money’ (sometimes in the form of a small piece of ‘precious metal’) in exchange for your product that you might then use in the same way.

Just a few hundred years ago this all began to change.

Rather than exchanging the things they wanted between themselves, people started to use money not just as an intermediary exchange vehicle but as a measure of ‘value’ of what they were providing each other.

And instead of just exchanging the things we want and need with each other, you and I give each other money instead and this is where the concept of ‘selling’ starts.

As time progressed the process developed. The ‘distance’ between providers increased.

‘Businesses’ developed to produce and provide products and services, and as these grew they lost direct contact between themselves and the people they were servicing.

Peter Drucker said that the purpose of a business is to find and keep customers.

‘Customers’ being the people to whom they were providing, or hoped to provide, whatever it was that they produced.

The direct relationship between ‘providers’ that used to exist, the exchange mechanism, was lost.

Instead it became ‘all about money’.

And this is when the ‘salesman’ came into the picture.

Businesses employed people to ‘sell’ their products and services.

The business, the provider, lost contact with the people they were providing things to and instead employed an intermediary to ‘sell’ their product.

And the provider on the other side of the old equation became a ‘customer’ or a ‘consumer’ who had nothing, other than money, to provide in return.

The mutual provision relationship was lost and turned into a simple transaction.

Unfortunately, most businesses forgot about or ignored the second half of Drucker’s definition. They focused on finding customers and making sales.

They rewarded their sales staff for making sales and bringing in the cash. There were plenty of potential customers around, often referred to disparagingly as ‘prospects’ ‘punters’ or even ‘suckers’, so they (the salesmen) didn’t worry too much about maintaining, or even creating, a ‘relationship’ with these customers.

But the thing is – the companies forgot that the customers, and not the sales people, were actually the ones providing them with the money they need to maintain ad grow their businesses.

Only recently, in the last 20 years or so, has the tide begun to turn.

The ‘suckers’ are fighting back!

As ‘consumers’ you and I have a not so secret weapon to tackle the ‘hit and run’ transactional sales people.

That weapon is information.

Now, we no longer have to rely on a salesman to provide information about those things we want or need to be provided with.

You and I can make our own decisions about what we want to buy, who we want to buy it from and how much we want to pay.

The ‘buying decision’ has moved back in favour of the purchaser.

We’ve not yet been able to downgrade the importance of money as an exchange mechanism although there are signs that the old ‘barter’ or provider to provider system may be returning in some circumstances.

But you and I are now able to make our own decisions as to whom we want to provide with money in exchange for what we want from them.

In Part 3 I’ll discuss how and why this is different from the ‘old’ systems and how ‘the salesman’ is adapting to a new role.

‘Lists’ (or ‘Traffic’), ‘Leads’, ‘Pitches’, ‘Prospects’, ‘Closing’ . . .

These are all terms from the world of ‘transactional sales’. Or perhaps I should say 20^th Century sales.

Are you ‘traffic’? Do you like being thought of as a ‘prospect’? How do you feel about being ‘in the sales funnel’? What about being ‘closed’?

Whatever you and I may think about this, and I for one am not too keen on being at the receiving end of it all, we are involved.

And there may be times when you and I fall into the trap of this type of sales thinking when we’re promoting our own products and services – or even ourselves.

Because you and I, whether we like the idea or not, are in ‘sales’.

And so is everyone else.

We are all sellers and we are all buyers.

Back in the day during most of the last century the only way to get information of things we wanted was to talk to a salesman (and it usually was a man).

By doing so we instantly became a ‘prospect’ and received not necessarily the information we wanted in order to make a decision but a ‘pitch’ about their version of the product we wanted to buy.

And then, before we could get away and consider what we wanted to do we had to go through an attempt to ‘close’ the sale.

I know; I’ve been on both sides. This process was what I was taught to do in sales when I was 17, over 50 years ago!

But the world is changing.

It’s well known that most people hate, or at least dislike, being ‘sold’ to – or as the Americans put it, just ‘being sold’, and most people, although there are many exceptions, hate or dislike having to ‘sell’.

But – and here’s the thing –

Most people like buying.

Most people get a sense of satisfaction, albeit sometimes short lived, when they purchase something new.

People even get a sense of achievement when they’ve done the ‘weekly shop’ for groceries and such like, even though it is often a bit of a chore at the time.

So what’s the problem?

People want to sell and people want to buy.

Where has it gone wrong?

You see, the big difference between the 20^th century and the 21^st is that you and I no longer have to consult a sales person when we want to buy stuff.

There are other sources of information, in particular the World Wide Web where you and I can consult search engines, ask questions on social media and seek out all the information we need (or think we need) before making our buying decision.

Then of course you and I simply press a few keys and make a few clicks and buy the product there and then – remotely – on the web.

And it’s delivered to us next day – or even the same day!

No ‘salesman’ involved

No prospecting, no pitching, no closing. All the ‘pain’ for you and I as buyers is taken away.

And sometimes we can be really sneaky, go and check out physical items in a retail outlet, even try on clothes and so forth, and then nip into the coffee shop next door and buy the product online, thus avoiding all that ‘sales’ nonsense and often with an extra discount for doing so!

Now this works well for ‘transactional’ sales of consumables and articles where no form of ‘follow up’ is needed and it works well for ‘impulse’ buys of ‘bright shiny objects’.

In these instances, and others like them ‘transactional selling’ has been replaced by ‘transactional buying’.

But this doesn’t work so well in response to marketing campaigns in the media where a telephone call is required, or in most business to business situations.

And it doesn’t work well where the purchase is more complex or involves a longer term engagement between buyer and seller than just purchasing the product.

And it doesn’t work at all well when a service, rather than a product, is being provided.

But many individuals and companies are still using old school sales methods for these things and they don’t work too well either!

In fact, they hardly work at all.

But, there is a better way, a 21^st Century way, and next week I’m going to give you my insight on that and how you and I can use it.

Both as ‘sellers’ and as buyers.