It’s not often your fundamental beliefs get challenged.

That’s exactly what happened when I had Scott Marker on the #lovesellinghatesales podcast.

Let me take a step back…

Actually, Scott was speaking my language 95% of the conversation.

Sales should be designed to support the customer and find the right solution…

Check

Sales should be supported by leadership with attainable goals…

Check

Sales as a profession has high turn over and burn out rate…

Check

Great sales should look like something that is not sales at all…

Check

Sales should not be paid commissions…

What! What??

OK, I’ll admit, I was taken back a bit, but what Scott did was set me up perfectly.

Sales is a high pressure, high turn over business which due to those things can put sellers in bad situations where they do not put the customer 1st because of THEIR interest in earning a commission.

100% buy it and have seen it happen.

If I take a look at the macro view, which is the majority of sellers are not hitting their quota.

Mental health is at an all time low.

The customer is more empowered and educated than ever.

Sales education and training is severely lacking.

Modern sales should be about serving the customer, then it does start to paint a very interesting picture for fundamental change.

The other BIG take away is the heavy onus on marketing.

For this model to work, marketing MUST be the driver of conversations.

The real focus of Scott’s model is to put the very best business minded and consultative people in front of prospects.

It’s the job of marketing to drive those conversations!

Again, there is a lot I agree with here, but again, there are some fundamental shifts that must happen in order for the model to work.

First, we have to really embrace customer centric marketing. Not a focus on high volume lead generation.

That shift will have to come from the top down, meaning a fundamental belief that lead and MQL metrics don’t matter.

Rather quality and revenue focused metrics do matter.

There is a lot to unpack in the episode, highly recommend you take a listen to the full conversation.

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