Here's a revealing web security article

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20046588-281.html?tag=topStories1

Cycles

One of the hardest lessons to learn as a salesperson is that customers buy on their own schedule not the salespersons.  This runs counterintuitive to the to the sales process and management of most companies.  I'm happy to be at the point in my career where I work for a company that works to respect the customers buying cycles.  Our challenge as technical advisors and consultants is to have our customer make a decision early enough in a cycle to allow enough time for a thorough implementation and training.  We also want to help our customers avoid and major down time or data loss due to failure of aging equipment or out dated software.

The only way to be fair in this process is to spend the time and energy to give our customers several choices along with the positives and negatives of each choice.  This often takes more time and there is not a guaranteed payoff at the end.  As a result consultants and advisors end up becoming product focused and limiting their options.  How do we provide our customers and prospects with enough information and options while not starving to death by giving out free consulting?  How can a customer or prospect assure they are getting enough options and not wasting time and energy of the consultants who are helping them out?

I surely am always learning new ideas on how to accomplish this from my end but I've got a couple of ideas

1. Be honest.  Talk about the competition up front and acknowledge the sales process for what it is.
2. Be ok with no.  The customer needs to be ok with saying "no" and the consultant needs to accept "no" up front.  Not everyone is a fit
3. Check in at each step.  Did we provide what you are looking for?  If no,  why go to the next step? If yes, lets set clear expectations for the next step

These Three ideas seem to be common sense but are very difficult to accomplish.  The reason is that we are all preconditioned by our own "bad" sales experiences.  It takes time to trust and make these ideas a priority but it is worth it.  

Thanks for reading ~pz