Critical Selling

2The First Step Is to Believe: Change Your Mindset

We know that sales is evolving and that buyers are changing. In fact, sales is always evolving. New products and services are constantly being brought to the marketplace. Every organization is trying to outflank its competition, whether through new products and services or through new sales and marketing efforts or through new customer-focused initiatives. Similarly, customers themselves are changing—and faster than ever. How they shop, where they shop, and the tools they shop with are evolving along with new technology. Why they buy, how they decide to buy, and their buying expectations are changing as well.

It's challenging enough to keep up with customers and competitors—much less to stay a step ahead of them. But if you want to have even a hope of keeping up with the changes that every sales professional faces today, and if you want to be a top performer, it's critical that you be open-minded, welcome continual improvement, and remain willing to adjust your sales approach to meet the needs of the market and of your customers.

Over the years, in consulting with countless sales professionals across dozens of industries and selling environments, we've seen a lot of what works and what doesn't when it comes to improving performance and sales effectiveness. We've identified scores of best practices as a result of our ongoing research. That research clearly shows that continuous improvement is critical when it comes to accelerating ...