CIO — DURHAM, N.C.?Edd Brown is having a few problems this morning. His assistant is AWOL, which means no coffee, no hotel sticky pastries and no one to register the baker’s dozen of us who have signed up for Solution Selling, the software sales boot camp being held at the local Marriott. Edd registers the 16 male and eight female sales reps who have shown up, then stands in the middle of the room. Edd, a former salesman himself, is running the boot camp, and he begins with the basics: "Power buys from power." "Act like an equal, and you’ll be treated like one." "Sell to executives, not IT." This is also known as the California Rule?get high, stay high. And don’t control the buyer, control the process.
We are sitting in a "U" around Edd, who uses paper on an easel and an overhead projector to walk us through his 53-page presentation. Maybe it’s because of the lack of coffee and Danish pastries, but immediately there’s cranky skepticism.
One salesman, who identifies himself as Mike, says, "We all know this. But every time you call, everyone here knows, your stature gets a little smaller."
Edd pads over to Mike’s seat and presses an ink stamp of a lightbulb onto his paper nameplate. The lightbulb is intended to encourage participation, and it’s Solution Selling’s logo.
"Maybe it’s time we stop saying salesman," says another cadet, whose nameplate is out of view. "Maybe we should be value brokers."
"We have all sorts of names. Pond scum. Liars. Cheaters. Thieves," says Edd. He sounds like he’s been through this before. "Let me offer this. Where would they be without sales?"
Mapping the Buyer
The "they" Edd refers to are, of course, corporate executives. The CEO, CIO or Senior VP of Whatever, and Solution Selling has this buyer mapped.
Solution Selling was founded by Mike Bosworth, an ex-salesman who based his courses around research into the buying and selling process. (The company was recently acquired by Provant, a Boston-based provider of performance improvement services and products.)
According to Bosworth’s research, 13 percent to 20 percent of the companies that buy software are innovators or early adopters, and sales reps don’t need to fight their way into these places; the software sells itself. Sixty-eight percent are either early majority or late majority buyers. It takes a skilled salesman, an "eagle," to open this person’s purse. The rest, 5 percent to 16 percent are laggards who aren’t worth the bother.
