Elite Sales Strategies

1The Modern Sales Approach

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

—Alvin Toffler

Professional selling has evolved over the past 75 years or so and using the modern sales approach is the best way to show that you're One-Up. Despite this, two older approaches, legacy laggard and legacy solutions, are still practiced. One reason you may be One-Down is because you are using a legacy approach to selling, one that is ill-equipped to create better outcomes for your clients. Here, we'll look at why the legacy approaches can hold you back, and how the modern approach can help you become One-Up.

The Legacy Laggard

Even the most recent strategies and tactics you find in the legacy laggard approach are now more than fifty years old, with some elements dating all the way back to the 1920s. They're built on the concept of information disparity, the idea that because your client was lacking information about your company's products or services, they needed to meet with a salesperson to learn what is available. As you will learn in Chapter 3, this disparity allowed salespeople to take advantage of the customers.

The fact that the prospect needed to buy something the buyer was selling made the interaction transactional, like many business-to-consumer purchases, but transactional models don't create the right level of value for B2B sales. Legacy laggard salespeople are trained to find “the decision-maker,” ...