Today we're going to be talking about the game of sales and I use the term game or the metaphor of a game as a way of being able to condense the complexity of the complex B2B sale into something that we can understand.

To be able to break it down into areas, to be able to comprehend it.

And you probably think, well, I do that already.

Well, the company's game plan or model of the game is really

designed for order-taking, where you have a discovery call, a presentation, a demo, a proof of concept of some kind,

a proposal, negotiate and close.

That is not the game. That is what the company wished the game was. What the

order process is. Because that doesn't work when you're trying to create an order, trying to get into

a new account to compete against a difficult competitor, to beat against no decision.

Now, in sales, we tend to make things even overly simplified with the CRM game, the way we view it, or we make it too complex,

where we involve psychology and human dynamics and social engineering and all this other stuff.

And when you make it too complex, people tend to give up or get lost in the weeds. If you make it too simple, we're not seeing

what's really going on in the deal. And to become a student of the game, you have to understand the game you're playing.

The customer's game and yours.

And to win it, you have to become a student of the game, otherwise you're reacting to what the

client wants or what your competitor is doing.

You need to block them out.

You need to be prepared. You need to have four thought to play that game.

Much like any game. And when I say game, it could be a board game, a sports game,

whatever performance-oriented game you've ever played.

The reason to do this is to be able to comprehend it, to see it, to pattern match it against previous games that you've played.

And once you become better and better at it, you can go deeper and deeper into it and become that student of the game.

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