Selling in a Crisis

31Don't Bring Charm to a Gunfight

When bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he used a machine gun for his work, he said, “You can't rob a bank on charm and personality.”

This is the machine-gun corollary to Sutton's law: To be successful, you need to go where the money is, but you won't get the money if you are not prepared to win. In other words, when the stakes are high, don't rely on charm alone.

When leads and pipeline opportunities were abundant, you could get away with swimming naked. You could take shortcuts, skip steps in the sales process, bring your B game, and still close sales. You could fail to follow up, conduct shallow discovery, talk more than you listen, be transactional – and people would still buy from you.

Now that the tide has gone out, buyers can tell when your sales game has no clothes. To win in this environment, starting RIGHT NOW, you must sell better. How you sell matters far more than what you sell.

With fewer buyers, the competition will be fierce. Big companies will be armed with procurement departments whose mission it is to protect the organization from making poor choices. Buyers have the upper hand.

The few prospects and customers who are buying are more risk averse. They are fearful of making mistakes and hesitant to make decisions. Stakeholders are in a vulnerable position.

The penalties for making mistakes can be severe. Mistakes can put their business, company, career, finances, or family at risk. This is why doing nothing – making no ...