Elite Sales Strategies

9The One-Up Obligation to Proactively Compel Change

Do not wait to strike until the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.

—William B. Sprague

My time selling what many consider a commodity really sharpened my already competitive nature. There are two major challenges when you sell a commodity. First, every client you call on already has a provider for what you sell. Second, most of your clients are not yet compelled to change, the one element you need to create and win a deal. Recently, I read that only three percent of any market is actually pursuing a change at any time, a figure that matches my own experience, at least in some industries.

When confronted by these two deeply intertwined challenges, a lot of salespeople wonder whether they should instead try to target the companies that are not already buying whatever it is they sell. Unless you have something that is going to make its own market, there is little reason ever to call on a company that does not need what you sell. When you live in the red ocean, you might dream of blue water, unstained by the blood of those who find themselves on the losing end of a contest. But in reality, many markets are dominated by competitive displacement sales, where each salesperson must remove their competition to win a client. The primary challenge in this type of sale is not that your client already has a provider. It's the fact that they are not compelled to change.

Problems don't age well. They tend to metastasize, growing ...