Colleen’s Blog

Having long studied the habits of top-ranked sellers and the changing nature of the marketplace, I’ve seen a steady shift in the power in buyer-seller relationships. Now, study after study confirms what I’ve been observing in the field: today’s buyer is showing less and less desire to engage with salespeople than ever before. 

I want to highlight three important questions that buyers are asking themselves right now. Knowing how to deal with these three questions will help you attract and retain more customers.

It’s important to keep finding things to remain positive about while in a crisis. To that end, I’ve talked about why it’s important to keep moving during tough times. It is equally important, however, to safeguard the way you think. Never lose your ability to be objective, anticipate, and adapt to change.

“Buyers have changed and loyalty’s dead now. Customers don’t care about the relationship anymore!”  I’ve been hearing that whine a lot from sellers. Most recently, it was from a client of mine, saying: “I’ve been supplying my long-time customer with free donuts and baseball hats every month for the last 20 years and now they’ve suddenly moved to the competition!”

As you may know, I like to keep up on the state of the current buyer: what's going through their minds, how are they behaving, and how are they rewarding or not rewarding sellers like us?

“Follow every step of this bulletproof routine every day and you’re sure to become a high performer in sales.” That, my friend, is terrible advice. And yet that kind of guidance keeps getting spread around as though it’s the plain truth—when, in fact, it’s just…well…bull-sourced fertilizer!

I've been emphasizing to a number of clients the importance of creating an “early warning system.” It’s a system that helps you identify and prevent client departures. And one of the biggest warning signs or triggers we have discovered is engagement. Specifically, a reduction in engagement or a dramatic change in engagement style.

As the post-pandemic landscape continues to reveal itself in today’s marketplace, price increases are a defining characteristic…and a pain point for many of us. In some markets, these increases are incremental bump-ups. But in others, the spikes are meteoric, due in large part to ongoing complications in the global supply chain.

Nothing causes you to lose a sale more than being out of sync with your buyer when it comes to your sales process. Thus, how do you prevent that? Create a buyer-verified pipeline.