Sean McPheat’s selling imperatives for 2012

In the latest Winning Edge (the ISMM’s magazine for members), Sean McPheat sets out what’s hot for this year in selling:
Sales professionals will finally get around to using social media
Sales 2.0, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube – these are all sites, terms and services that sales pros have had on their ‘to do’ list for some time. So you’ve got your LinkedIn profile…well, now’s the time to start using it: 2012 will the be the year where the adoption of these sites gathers momentum and this will snowball as more and more success stories are made public and the return on investment finally filters through.

Entrepreneurial salesmanship
You will need to think like an entrepreneur and opportunity seeker more than ever now. You will need to look at new avenues for generating business and fresh methods for keeping existing ones. Sales recruitment will look at potential candidates who also possess innovative, entrepreneurial and creative traits in addition to the tried and tested assessment criteria.
A shift towards unbiased benefit selling
The term what’s in it for me (WIIFM) has been around since the beginning of time. The problem is that today’s buyers know that this is a biased point of view. WIIFM will be superseded in 2012 with PISB (prove I should buy). Demonstrating and explaining ‘the what’ is not enough. Instead there will be a shift away from you telling the whole story, features, benefits etc and instead a move towards a joint effort that will include input from your customers via video, audio and written testimonials, interviews, unbiased social media feedback and showcasing your products in action via live customers.
Negotiation skills become vital
You will need to add negotiation skills to your armoury if margins are going to be protected in 2012. Negotiation skills are normally a section tagged on to the last part of a sales training course or as part of the closing/objection handling section but it’s a vital skill that is often overlooked. Your buyers are going to demand more and more and will want to pay less and less so those that are best equipped to deal with the price bashing barrage that is to come will win the day.
Marketing and sales alignment for 
early engagement
More so than ever, sales and marketing are going to have work very closely together to engage with your buyers much earlier in the sales process. Research illustrates that 25-40% of the buying process is completed online before customers engage with your sales team. Those companies that can catch their prospects while they are conducting their research online, 
on blogs, forums, groups and the like with have a distinct advantage over the competition. This will need an aggregated approach via both marketing and sales to create the ‘bait’ and thought leadership content all over the Internet to attract interest and then to create effective lead capture, follow-up and engagement systems.


Sean McPheat is author of eselling and MD of MTD Sales Training.
www.ismm.co.uk