The Trusted Advisor Relationship: What Is It nike roshe run italia online , and What Should It Be? plus articles and information on Sales For the past months, maybe a year, I've been hearing sales groups talk about the need to bee Trusted Advisors (I'll call them TAs). I suspect that the problems cropping up in the sales arena these days ? the increased length of the sales cycle, the increased levels of petition - are leading sales management to base their initiatives on being of true service to prospects, as a way to seem different from the petition. But by everyone attempting to bee TAs, and by not changing the basic skill set ? or belief set or oute - of the sales force, sellers are doing more of the same, but with a different name. Sorry to be so blunt, but let's look at the facts here. 1. So long as you are trying to sell your product, the entire discussion with prospects will be biased: the questions will be biased, the help you offer will be biased, the prospect's responses will be biased. 2. Buyers won't trust a sales person they don't know. They can't, which means interactions will have to our over time nike roshe run saldi , and at the mercy of how the long it takes the prospect to trust you. 3. The criteria that buyers will use to take advice from a sales person is dependent upon many mysterious factors that you can't know up front. Therefore, you'e flying blind as you were before trying to be a TA. 4. If everyone is attempting to be a TA, what differentiates anyone? And what if the prospect is getting conflicting advice? What if the prospect is getting the exact same advice ? through several different sales people? 5. If you are only asking questions around the area that your product supports, how can you truly advise a prospect who lives in a plex system ? which all of us, and all of our prospects, do? 6. How can you truly be offering advice if you cannot know the entire internal fact pattern that has created and maintained the buyer's problem over time? Net : this seems to me like just another buzzword. THE CURRENT BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT Let's see what needs to happen before you can actually call yourself an advisor. First, you'll need to understand the system that your buyers live within. Your buyers are facing many new challenges these days. Their petition (or in the B2C area, the range of products offered) is so plex that they have to manage a world-wide petition with petitors that they don't even know. To remain petitive and fresh, the prospects need to initiate frequent innovation that will potentially bring in new business partners, support new initiatives, and manage change as quickly as possible. As a result, there is a continual flow of new decisions, new decision makers nike roshe run italia saldi , new initiatives, new rules, roles, norms, and problems that need to be managed that have not been in play before now. And the prospect may or may not be familiar with the full range of issues that will affect him and that need to be managed. I recently called a client's prospect on a very large, long-term sales effort that had been going on for years. It seemed the prospect needed the service badly and it was costing them large sums of money as a result of not adopting the seller's product. My client's people were very professional, knew all of the problems attached to the perfect solution, and were offering very high quality advice as TAs. And yet the decision was dragging on, and through different managers as people came and went ? without a decision being taken. Everyone even tried to go around the problem and the immediate players, to no avail. When I called, it became apparent that there was an entirely different 'soft' problem ? a human problem - that had nothing to do with the specifics of my client's solution, and no one had addressed that problem at all. Yet so long as it continued to remain unresolved, the sale wouldn't happen. My client was doing a fine job of being a TA; the team of sellers have been entirely knowledgeable nike roshe run italia , professional, and very supportive of their prospect. They had even bee friends over the years. But they weren't managing the real issue ? one that no one had recognized. For some reason, when you see a problem that your solution can fix, you think the only decision that your prospect needs to make is whether or not to purchase your product. In reality, deciding on your product is the last decision that will get made, after the prospect figures out all she needs to attend to in order to design a solution aeptable to all of the internal elements. HOW A SELLER CAN ADVISE Given the type and number of number of decisions the prospect needs to make, you can now make a real difference to your prospect by helping him recognize all of the internal elements he needs to manage before you pitch your product. Until now, you've concentrated your assistance on that area that your product can support. But think about systems for a moment: a system is a conglomeration of all of the elements that determine the status quo. To flush it out a bit, I'll use the RIPP model ? Relationships, Interventions, People, and Policies. Relationships include: vendors, partners Nike Air Jordan 6 Uomo , stakeholders. Interventions include: boards, media, market forces, mandates, policies. People includes: roles and job descriptions, management and leadership styles, values and beliefs, and personality issues. Policies include: rules, history, norms, goals, initiatives, and time frames. The above prise the systems elements that live within every system Air Jordan 6 Uomo , defined here in human terms, and included in personal relationships, corporations, sole-proprietors, and every group or team in every industry. You have all of the elements of RIPP in your family, your primary love relationship, your work, your team. And until or unless all of the elements are addressed, any change would create chaos.