Why is selling so difficult?

Trying to sell something is next to impossible. However, helping people buy is just a matter of logic. This is the idea we're going to explore with the following topics:

• Why is selling so difficult?
• What is the actual role of a salesperson?
• How do you go from selling to helping people buy

So, why is selling so difficult?

This might sound a little weird, but once I understood it, I was able to generate a lot of leads and build a huge pipeline, even with scarce resources. That said, selling is not really a thing.

You see, everytime a potential customer interacts with any business, it means a purchasing process is starting or is in progress.

That interaction, as long or short as it is, will always end with the potential customer deciding if they buy something from that provider or not. The only exceptions to this principle occur in markets without competitors. Situations where the customer has no other option.

That means the potential customer has all the decision making power. So, nobody is really selling anything, but people are buying a lot of stuff. Understanding this is the answer to the question in hand.

You see, if what is actually happening is a purchasing process, the only parameters that matter during a potential commercial transaction are the ones that are important to the buyer, not to the seller.

So, why is selling so difficult? Because people that want to buy something are trying to execute a relatively defined process, and your sales tactics are making it difficult or annoying for them.

Then, what is actual role of a sales person?

Your job as a salesrep is to help people make the best possible purchase. And I'm not reinventing the wheel here, it's well-known that successful salespeople have these characteristics:

• They know the product they're selling better than anyone in the company. They've mastered it to the point where they can come up with creative ways to use it to solve a customer's problem.
• They also learn everything they can about their potential customers looking to become experts. That's why they can get their prospect's attention with a simple email or LinkedIn message.
• They become adept students of the contextual things that matter to their potential clients. For example, the industry, regulations, processes, politics, etc.

There are many other good qualities, but a salesrep that constantly works on these 3 fundamentals will always be able to help their potential customers. And that's the point, helping them to make a decision that is so good that they become life-long customers.

That is not the only important role salespeople play in making "selling" easier, which takes me to my next and final point.

How do you go from selling to helping people buy?

As I said, it is a matter of logic. You just have to transform your sales process into the purchasing mechanisms your potential customers want to use. The wording might sound weird, but let's use salespeople to exemplify the word "mechanism".

To someone that's in the process of buying something, a salesperson is just a mechanism they for 2 things: getting information and doing a transaction.

In our digital era, most people inform themselves and complete basic transactions on their own. So, depending on your industry, forcing people to talk to a salesrep too soon (or at all) can generate so much friction with the potential customer's purchasing process that they go to another provider.

Now, to create purchasing mechanisms your potential customers want to use, let's use a broad example of a purchasing process that will make sense to almost any kind of customer:

• Discovery/generating interest: people can't buy something if they don't know it exists. One of the main responsabilities of the marketing department is to get in front of people.

However, salesreps play an important role too because ads don't always reach the people that make things happen. So, intelligent and targetted prospecting efforts can get you in front of specific people.

It's not the buyer's job to discover you. It isn't also their job to be interested in what you offer. Whatever message you use has to be logically relevant for them, not for you.

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• Generating purchasing intent: The barrier that's between interest and the purchase is uncertainty. People will need more information before actually considering spending money. The bigger the monetary commitment, the more the information they are going to need.

They just want to make sure they have all the data they consider necessary to make a satisfactory decision. You can use videos, articles, downloadable content, interactive tools and salespeople as mechanisms they can use to get it.

• Making the purchase: lastly, it never hurst to ask yourself how do customers want to buy from you. Do they want to a salesrep at their disposition from day 1, do they want to make the whole process by themselves, or do they want a mix?

Most likely, your potential customers would benefit from having all the before mentioned options.

So, yes, selling is really difficult, but helping people buy is not that complicated. One thing all successful companies have is they make a product or service that people want to buy and use more and more.

Both parts of that equation are equally important. If they want to buy it but not use it, they will stop being customers. If they want to use it, but not buy it, they will never be customers. But that's a topic for another occasion.

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