Selling software

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In interview after interview, buyers of B2B software are all telling me the same thing about how they bought, where they are now, and what they wish software vendors would do for them.

This was their buying process: After careful analysis, weighing all the tradeoffs and putting several vendors through their paces, they decided who "won." They got that big expenditure approved. They contacted the vendor, purchased the software, and got it installed, usually with help from tech support. They are now using it.

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Every day I see companies committing Selling Suicide. They are desperate for new sales, but because they are clueless about what their buyer cares about, they place one barrier after another in the way of the buyer - a buyer who was already on their site, virtual money in hand, totally committed to buying. Only the most determined buyers make it through the maze of confusion, conflicting messages, and missing information. It is so sad.

Witness a real-life Selling Suicide situation.

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In a recent article, ("Do You Secretly Believe You Are Smarter Than Your Customer?"), I chastised Jeff Thull, the author of Mastering the Complex Sale, for saying in his book that most customers of the complex sale "are not equipped to make a good buying decision - that the salesperson selling to them must guide them through the process."

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This article was halfway finished, with the title you see above, when I got an email with this subject line: "If you want to sell better, just shut up!"

Whoa, I thought. Readers often send me emails with the article title as the subject line. But this article hadn't yet left my computer! What was going on?

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Successful sales management requires a certain kind of discipline that is very, very difficult when you're also running the company, trying to do marketing, managing product creation, dealing with government regulations, and so on. However, like anything else, it has to be done - and done right - in order for the company to run smoothly.

Here's what has to happen.

1) A daily sales meeting - with everyone - for about 15 minutes. That's all. You can even hold the meeting standing up - which guarantees that it won't go over the 15 minutes. It's very important to keep this meeting short, because otherwise you won't do it every day. It will be too time-consuming.