A business’s greatest asset is the collective experience of its employees. According to estimates, Millennials will represent roughly almost 50% of the workforce in less than 10 years. A flood of blogs, articles, and books are already trying to help business owners, professionals and executives understand how the clash of Millennial, Generation X, and Boomer preferences will impact their business and personal careers.
People distrust salespeople. They have built-in detectors to tune out sales pitches. And once the sales pitch detector goes off, information flow stops.
When you hope to gain the favourable attention of another person, consider stating your intention upfront. The more direct you are in stating your intention, the more likely you will be able to experience an authentic conversation where each party shares what's important to them.
To 'sell' your idea, product or service, you must pass the ACID test:
A. - Gain favourable Attention,
C. - Inspire Confidence,
I. - Build Interest to where
D. - Desire surfaces.
When 'desire' surfaces, the other person takes the lead in the conversation, while you begin to provide the evidence necessary to justify the transaction.
In all of the existing books on sales and generations, there is little research on how sales organisations should prepare to effectively leverage the skills and talents of multiple generations.
In the recently released book, The Multigenerational Sales Team by Warren Shiver and David Szen, focuses on the increasing need for sales organisations to more effectively leverage talent from generational groups who think, sell, and buy in vastly different ways.
It addresses the challenges that many organisations are facing right now:
• How can generations with different perspectives find ways to successfully work together?
• How should you recruit, train, and deploy different generations of salespeople to build an effective sales team?
• How can sellers identify and address the generational “silent killers” within the sales process?
This book, explores how to overcome these obstacles by adjusting internal practices including recruitment, development, and management of salespeople.
You will also learn how to improve client-facing activities for better diagnosis and accommodation of buyers’ preferences. With The Multigenerational Sales Team as a guide, sales professionals and teams who begin this transformation will learn to leverage each generation’s unique strengths to drive improvements in both individual and organisational performance.
Reference: Warren Shiver & David Szen: ‘The Multigenerational Sales Team’: Harness the Power of New Perspectives to Sell More, Retain Top Talent, and Design a High Performing Workplace
