Aligning Market Adoption to Buying Behavior

In my last post, I suggested that we need to re-think the buyer adoption curve. I also implied that 80% of active buyers don’t buy, and sales people have diminished influence over buyers today. The problem is no different than it has been in the past, but the environment we are in has changed; requiring some adaptations. The misguided theory of hiring more talent with rolodexes to increase sales no longer works (profitably).

It’s time to recognize two simple facts: first, you can only manage systems, not the randomness of people and second, no one ever cared about our products, but they had no place else to go to get their information. Now buyers do have other places to go, and it doesn’t matter how good you are at sales, you team will simply never overcome a poorly designed system (or no system) in the long run. Say what you will; you’re probably in sales. J

With so much information available to buyers today, they no longer need to come to us to negotiate for it. Many times, they are r…