“Checkers to Chess” Revisited

“Checkers to Chess” was first published in the Journal of Selling & Major Account Management.  Experiences validated our thesis and encouraged us to further develop methods to shape productive dialogue between sales people and their clients’ C-level and business executives.

IBM’s study “Redefining Competition Insights from the Global C-suite Study – The CEO perspective” emphasizes understanding and renewed urgency CEO’s place on leveraging technology for breakthrough initiative.  A responsibility of sales is to provoke clients (and their own companies) to inspire imagination.   Nevertheless, we continue to uncover that the preponderance of Enterprise B2B organizations rely on outdated selling strategies and commodity propositions.

Pressure to peddle product and fill pipelines overlooks how these tactics lower expectations of sales people and reward mediocrity.   Product and price selling relegates to a commodity discussion with intermediate managers who are told to “get the best price.”

Central to selling success is Demand Generation, creating demand where none exists.   If clients have already defined need, vendors will be one of many responding to a lowest price Request for Proposal.  Creating Demand originates from dialogue with business leaders solving complexity in business in order to overcome obstacles, open new markets, or ignite growth.