In the Ad Nauseam Hall of Fame, in the Sales Wing, you’ll find no shortage of sales techniques including SPIN Selling, N.E.A.T. Selling, Conceptual Selling, SNAP Selling, Challenger Sales, The Sandler System, CustomerCentric Selling and MEDDIC Selling (Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain and Champion). 

These sales techniques, which are, for the most part, L.A.M.E. (Lacking Any Meaningful Effectiveness), ride shotgun to my more favorite names for closing techniques including The Porcupine, Ben Franklin, Something for Nothing, the Assumptive, Level With Me, The Columbo Close, the Now or Never, the Backwards Close, and my personal favorite, the Puppy Dog Close. Thankfully, these sales techniques have fallen by the wayside in favor of a more serious, more effective, and more differentiating sales approach that I developed for our clients years ago. I call it Critical Insight Selling™ and it’s time most companies learn the attributes of it. 

Rather than selling features and benefits, services and capabilities, or experience and longevity as most salespeople default to, Critical Insight Selling™ reverts to selling knowledge, wisdom, thought leadership and trust. In a recent study cited by the Harvard Business Review, it was stated that only 18% of salespeople are actually trusted or respected by buyers and only 31% can even manage to effectively converse with senior executives. 

So why is it that pitch after pitch, close after close, and follow-up after follow-up fail far more times than they succeed? It’s because sales people aren’t taking the time to work with marketing people, and marketing people aren’t taking the time to understand the importance of thought leadership, the development of critical insights to prove their thought leadership, and using the critical insights for purposes of capturing greater revenue through Critical Insight Selling™.

When you use your critical insights as a sales method, you’ve shunned the tired and unsuccessful techniques of the past in favor of selling your thought leadership and industry knowledge. You’ve differentiated yourself and your company from the competition by building the trust buyers want, by demonstrating your understanding of keen insights that are viewed as valuable by buyers, and proving your abilities to converse with topline executives, which, research shows, they’re longing for. Through my Critical Insight Selling™workshops, you’ll learn how to sell above the rest, you’ll understand why thought leadership is the most dominating technique in the revenue capture process, and you’ll learn why wisdom always wins…hands down. 

Of course, Critical Insight Selling™ isn’t ideal for the novice sales rep, and it can’t be used unless your company is a bonafide thought leader with original insights that executives find enlightening. But one of the most significant advantages of becoming a thought leadership organization is certainly the ability to capitalize on Critical Insight Selling™ and that will have an ROI many times more than the costs associated with becoming a knowledge resource.