EkaLore has written at length (“The Entrepreneur’s Journey”) about the effect on decision making (“Yes/No/Maybe”) where the mental value in people’s minds does not match reality. Sales is where this happens the most. “The number in your head” is a perceived guess at the value that the salesperson is trying to improve by education, emotion, and calculation. Marketing has guessed how persuasion can get a better match between the desired seller’s price and the prospects’ “number in your head”. A big mismatch means either an instant sale (the value perceived is so good), or more likely, an immediate dismissal (the value is perceived as so terrible).
Sales' job is to move the mental number in the prospect to justify the price. Competition means the price also has to be perceptibly better (“value”) than the competition's number. Sometimes this is simply impossible (and a waste of time) to change. In competitive situations each of the activities can change mental numbers– education (i.e., adding value by increasing actual benefits or decreasing costs by pricing plans), emotion (non-priced value improvement for brand valuation or perceived benefits), or calculation (changing the value by methods such as Total Cost of Ownership or when pricing plan benefits will occur). Sales has to have the tools for each activity to effectively change the numbers in prospects’ heads.
Experienced sales staff will size up a prospect and adjust tactics used in specific to move numbers in prospects’ heads. The skills training for activities and communications requires information and technical knowledge (“expertise”) enabling sales staff to supplely engage prospects. Adjusting tactics across a sales force requires feedback and communications with marketing and management. Accelerating sales at an enterprise level will require skills and communication across multiple enterprise departments.
Next Up - Estimates are off, what Inflationary expectations are doing to sales forecasting
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