It’s that time of year in the north country. Time to put away the summer toys and prepare for old man winter. Time for blowing leaves, and blowing out the irrigation. Time to reorg the garage, the shed, and unfortunately the forge. Leave are changing and a new season begins. Let’s not forget about ‘The Jolly Green Machine’. Checked the oil and added some gas, and it started on the second pull.
This ‘ol John Deere holds a special place in my heart. It was my first action to exercise my new Buy Cycle. It was a cold wintery day in 1996. The snow was thick, wet, heavy and cold! After 2 hours of blowing snow off the drive with a standard run of the mill, I was cold, wet and exhausted. Every 4 feet I had to take my hoe handle and repeatedly jab through the snow chute to unclog it with frozen wet sticky snow. Time was of the essence and I had to get the kids off to school, and me and my bride had to get to work.
After disrobing 4 layers and a quick cup of coffee, I did it! I fixed my Buy Cycle once and for all. I called the nearest John Deere dealer. I asked what they had in stock that would clear a 2500 sq. ft. drive in 30 min or less no matter how deep, thick, wet and sticky the snow was. The answer; We have a 23 horse, and a 17 horse, both with all the trimmings of heated handles, 4 forward gears and 2 reverse. That was music to my ears. I said I’ll take the bigger one. When can you deliver. More music – We can deliver tomorrow. Awesome here is my credit card.
I hung up and shared my microwave purchase with my bride. She asked, of course, “How much is it?” I said, “I don’t know and I don’t care.” Being the bargain hunter she is, she was shocked I would buy something on the spot with no shopping, no comparison, no research, no time to think it over, and no consultation with someone more experienced in blowing snow. I said I’d be happy to let her do all that and then she could be the one out in the tundra in the future. We laughed and I told her this is also going to make us a LOT of money in the future. With a confused look she shook her head and assured me we would talk about this later.
Now you may be asking the same thing. How is buying a snow blower on the spot without knowing the price going to help you sell more? There are 21 Core competencies and Objective Management Group measures all of them. One is dubbed Buy Cycle. Buy Cycle is defined by the process one uses to make major purchases. In other words, the way your salespeople make major purchases is a mirror image of how they subconsciously expect their prospects to buy from them. A non-supportive Buy Cycle causes, just to name a few sales outcomes:
- Longer Sales Cycles.
- Acceptance of stalls, put offs and think it overs when it is time to make a decision.
- Selling on Price instead of Value.
- Inability to displace the competition early.
- Lack of respect and inability to leverage trust.
From our statistics of 2.3MM Salespeople evaluated in 35,000+ companies in over 200 different industries show sales people with a strong supportive Buy Cycle are 260% times more effective than salespeople with a non-supportive Buy Cycle. This one finding can make a HUGE difference in your sales team’s outcomes. But what about the other 20 Core Competencies?
Which ones are hindering your team the most?
Click here to learn more and test drive our Free Team Analysis!