How to Sell When Nobody’s Buying

That quote is an interesting way to start a book about how to sell when nobody ’ s buying. That quote, combined with rapidly changing economic conditions, is the basis for why nobody ’ s buying. Twentieth – century selling techniques are dead, but salespeople are trying to ignore its rotting corpse in boardrooms and
business lunches around the world every hour of every day. It ’ s time to face the facts: If you want to sell and succeed today, you have to update your skills. The techniques your sales manager learned in a seminar in 1974 that were based on tactics developed in 1954 aren ’ t going to help you today. You must develop
new strategies and new tactics that refl ect the reality of these times — our times. This book will help you do that, but you have to be open to the idea that you are going to work harder and learn more than you have in the past so that you can thrive in the future. If you can ’ t commit to learning something new, no matter how long you ’ ve been selling, you should simply quit now; selling isn ’ t for you anymore. Walk away with your
dignity intact and fi nd a new career. If, however, you are willing to buckle down, to learn and test some new ideas in your industry (yes, yours; it is just like everyone else ’ s), then selling when nobody ’ s buying is your time to succeed.
Ask yourself this question: Is it really true that nobody’s buying? Of course, it’s not. Economies change, and businesses come and go, but what is more accurate is to say that the same people you are used to selling to might not be buying. The people you’ve always relied on for sales might not be buying. But someone is.
You might not even be able to find buyers by looking in the same places you’ve always looked, but they are still out there. However, you certainly won’t find them using the same old tools you’ve always used. From the 1980s onward, armed with big budgets, venture capital, and, for the most part, a buzzing economy, sales changed. Big salaries were available; lofty titles such as chief sales officer were offered up, and VP of sales titles were handed out to anyone who showed up, whether they had five minutes of management experience or not. In many industries, sales happened without a lot of work; you simply had to show up to sell. The selling process changed. Salespeople were no longer experts, they were sales professionals; the experts came with them to demonstrate and to answer tough questions, and the account managers came behind them to build the relationship, but the salespeople sat in the middle, selling . . . sort of. You see, in times of big budgets, you
need only show up to sell, but when nobody’s buying you have to do something different. That is what this book is all about. I’ll go so far as to argue that after 2009 the world of business and consumer buying will be a fundamentally different place, one that will require a completely different mindset and a different kind of salesperson to succeed. Modern salespeople must arm themselves with a new set of skills. They must not only flex with their environment, the economy, and their company; they must also assimilate and adapt new skills to meet people where they live and work. The Internet has changed a lot of things, including how we sell and
how we buy. The skills you are about to learn will not only help you sell when nobody’s buying — they’ll be the core skills you need to compete in 2009 and beyond.