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A Sales Evolution or Revolution? What’s changed in sales methods over the past 30 years and what it means for modern sales-based organisations.

How does a sales-based organisation know which sales methodology is best?

Solution selling, SPIN selling, Insight Selling, Smarter Selling, RAIN Selling, Consultative Selling, Challenger Selling….and the list goes on. Over the last 30 years, sales ‘experts’ and authors the world over (us included) have devised, formulated and promoted a range of different selling methods that have all spelt the demise of the traditional ‘push’ sales approach.

And it seems that with every new method, the authors claim to be introducing a revolutionary new approach. But are they really?

David Lambert, my co-author on Smarter Selling, and I weren’t so sure. We suspected that each new method was really just putting new labels on existing approaches, or making a small evolutionary change to existing sales methods. More than anything, we thought the influx of so many sales methods into the market is likely to be quite confusing to most sales based organisations, who will be left wondering who’s right, who’s wrong, and what’s actually different between the different methods?

So, we decided to take matters into our own hands and review what’s actually changed in sales methods over the past 30 years – and has it been an evolution or a revolution?

You can download the paper here.

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