In case you haven't heard, buyer behavior has dramatically changed. Buyers are empowered and more sophisticated and, thanks to the internet, flooded with information and research overload. At the same time your buyers are searching—often in vain— for new ways to innovate, compete, and improve their success. But when salespeople bring valuable insights and ideas to their buyers, they strengthen their relationships, differentiate from their competition, and win more sales. While it may be a new concept to you, insight selling is the heart and soul for how top performing sales professionals sell.  It's why they crush their sales quota year after year after year.  Rather than talking about insight selling I thought I would share this great video illustrating insight selling.  

In a previous blog post, Accelerating Your Customer's Hiring & Buying Process,  I shared ideas on how applying project management principles including the use of a tool like the customer hiring plan can accelerate the customer buying process. If you recall, a customer hiring plan is a plan that accounts for all of the tasks and events that must be acted upon and completed including the decisions that must be made by you and your customer from the time the job order is qualified until the consultant’s first day of work. Not only does it account for all of the tasks, activities and events but it provides a timeline in which all must be completed by in order for the customer to start seeing business results in the time frame in which they need and expect to see them. Below I share with you infographics that highlight the benefits to both the customer and the salesperson for adopting a customer hiring plan. Download Your Free Copy of the Customer Hiring Plan What strategies are you and your team deploying to accelerate the sales cycle? What tools and methodologies are you apply to prevent stalled sales cycles?  Let's start a conversation in the comments secion below.

IT Staffing sales professionals commonly run into this objection when calling on new prospects. As soon as the buyer realizes the nature of the phone call he or she says something along the lines of, "We have an approved vendors list. We're all set."  What is the best way to reply to this objection?  The first thing sales people need to understand is that this objection first and foremost is designed to end the conversation. It's a conversation stopper!  The prospect just wants to get you off the off phone. So you're going to have hang in there and keep the prospect engaged. More on this in a minute.