I had my book outline of Scale Your Sales, a system I developed to fill a gap in sales leadership and sales team development. Namely, the problem of sales teams not hitting quota due to lack of motivation, sales productivity and access to decision-makers. I have had great success with the revised Scale Your Sales system to include more of the social selling aspects critical to sales development.
The plan was to develop the first draft of the book, Scale Your Sales, during my six weeks working retreat in Agadir, Morocco. For the last eight years, I’ve spent an extended period during the December and January months working on projects in warmer climates such as Tenerife, Egypt and more recently Morocco. Working in 20+ degrees average temperatures on fast data speeds areas that have a less than +3 time zone difference. My past projects have included recording online courses, writing training workshops, reading a ton of books, writing many articles and recording several YouTube video series.
Within the first week, I was beating my 1,500-word daily target, however, after three weeks, I realised something was missing. Like my first book Business Evolution, it was a Problem = Solution book. Although the strategies are proven and highly relevant, this was not the book I was looking to get published. I wanted a paradigm shift in thinking about how the B2B complex sales model, and although this was on the edges of the current book scope, the shift was not big enough.
You know when something is on the tip of your tongue, but your words are not fully formed. I had disparate ideas that were connected, but I was struggling to create a coherent structure.
I was truly stuck!
After 100,000 words, and a developing frustration, a loss of writing momentum and a few conversations, I decided to not to finish this draft of Scale Your Sales but to start again with a new working title Preparing Buyers to Buy.
Scale Your Sales is taking the perspective of the vendor in better preparing the sales team with the changing buyer behaviour. While Preparing Buyers to Buy, takes the perspective of the buyer and what they want from the relationship.
Remember the film with Mel Gibbon as an advertising executive, What Women Want, well, Preparing Buyers to Buy is the What Buyers Want! Imagine you are Mel Gibbons trying on women’s stocking to understand what it feels like to be a woman wearing this item so that you can speak their language in the advertising and ultimately women buy more of your stockings. You are the salesperson who must understand what it feels like to be the buyer, buying your solution, but instead of selling, you help your buyer to buy more.
It is like starting with the end in mind and working backwards; this is Preparing Buyers to Buy.
Preparing Buyers to Buy talks about the relationship buyers want and how the relationship between the salesperson and the vendor must change to enable buyers to have what they want. Preparing Buyers to Buy introduces a whole new sales model for buyers to buy and the entire customer organisation to embrace.
Unlike many sales development books that continue to suggest that you (the salesperson) can give the customer what they want and still get what the vendor wants (successfully hitting quotas) is not cutting it! Buyers will continue to block the sales and marketing efforts of the vendor if they continue to sell their solutions – Why? Because it is not what buyers want!
It is not only about what buyers want but how they want it, Preparing Buyers to Buy address this shift.
So, now I am back at my London desk with the daily challenge of growing a consultancy and speaking business. What’s next?
I have given myself until the end of February to get Preparing Buyers to Buy ideas into a coherent structure so I can complete a book proposal ready to sell my thoughts to a publisher.
Wish me Luck
