Evan Powell | Selling The Way Your Buyer's Buy

In today’s episode of The Sales Evangelist, our host Donald Kelly meets with Evan Powell to discuss how you sell products the same way your buyers are looking to buy. Who is Evan Powell? Powell originally started as a sales rep, but went on to help cofound Reprise, a software company focused on developing demos for software. The company’s website is www.reprise.com WHY sell the way your buyers are looking to buy? There’s been a shift in HOW buyers are actually buying in this new year. Powell started selling in the early 2010s, and in his experience, buyers wanted to learn what they didn’t already know. Buyers wanted their hands held, instead of doing the research on their own. In TODAY’S environment, however, things aren’t like that. Buyers are jaded and have developed a buying process that THEY want to use. Remaining relevant and actually adjusting to this shift is KEY in selling and not becoming an anachronism. Here’s a figure to keep in mind: 77% of buyers say their last B2B buy was TOO difficult. How do you sell like buyers want to buy? The first thing to do is to: Provide your buyer with information. Buyers spend VERY little time actually talking to sales reps. Instead, they’re doing research to figure out the best product/service to buy. Provide them with this information. Less than 5% of a buyer’s time is ACTUALLY spent talking to a sales rep. Powell suggests actually EMAILING your demo/pitch BEFORE you do any calls. Make the information available. Also, DON’T try to force them into a call. A lot of buyers are ghosting sellers early into the process because they’re NOT YET ready to actually have a meeting. Another way to make this information more available is to: Stop gating so much content on your company website. Again, one PRIMARY way that buyers actually do their research is through company websites. When that information isn’t easily accessible, the buyer is LESS likely to actually go through your sales funnel. Don’t forget the IMPORTANCE of trust as a seller as well. Buyers are looking for sellers that are trustworthy, not sellers simply looking to meet a quota. Powell’s final piece of advice is: Put YOURSELF into your buyer’s shoes. Go through your sales funnel and think about whether YOU would like the process or not. If you would, then keep it the same. Otherwise, adapt it so your buyer WILL enjoy it. You can get ahold of Evan Powell at www.reprise.com or on LinkedIn. You can talk to Donald and drop him a message on LinkedIn, Tik Tok, and Instagram at donaldckelly. You can also join TSE’s space on Circle to talk to Donald and other sellers looking to improve their craft. This episode is brought to you in part by Scratchpad. Scratchpad is the first Revenue Team Workspace specifically designed to adapt to each salesperson’s workflow, so you don’t have to change your habits. Get Scratchpad free at Scratchpad.com.  Credits As one of our podcast listeners, we value your opinion and always want to improve the quality of our show. Complete our two-minute survey here: thesalesevangelist.com/survey. We’d love for you to join us for our next episodes by tuning in on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify.  Audio is provided by Free SFX, Soundstripe, and Bensound. Other songs used in the episodes are The Organ Grinder written by Bradley Jay Hill, performed by Bright Seed, and Produced by Brightseed and Hill.