In most complex B2B sales environments, our most significant and consistent competition typically hasn’t come from another conventional “competitor”: it has come from the status quo. For our customers, status quo is familiar. It is often comfortable. And so they have often failed to be convinced of the need for change unless and until maintaining the status quo has become obviously unsafe.
Competing against the status quo has always been a challenge for salespeople who think of their role as selling their company’s products and services rather than solving their customer’s problems. But even those successful salespeople who have mastered the art of consultative, problem-focused, solution-orientated selling are finding that the world has changed.
In the current environment, little is certain, other than that our prospective customer’s cherished status quo is probably no longer safe. The old assumptions, and the old certainties, no longer prevail. It’s premature to predict exactly
