Sales Equals Sales. Not Marketing Plus Sales.

Sales = Sales.Not Sales = Marketing PLUS Sales.Why do I make this blatently obvious statement?Because this space has effectivly turned the sales process into the WHOLE buying process from front to back.And then we scratch our heads wondering why we can't find any "good" sales talent.Keep your shirts on and follow along.Prospects should be 90% of the way to buying BEFORE they ever get on the phone with a sales rep.If they aren't, you don't have a sales role.You have a sales-TITLED person doing the job marketing was supposed to do.One easy example to figure out if this is your company is if your rep has to educate the prospect on what the offer actually does.Anything that universally applies to EVERYONE does NOT belong on a sales call, including the price [range].If a rep is having to get someone oriented around the USP in any way, shape or form...Automatic system failure.Sales reps don't ESTABLISH value. They confirm it.They don't CREATE solutions. They tailor them.Is selling still hard?Duh. Don't read what I'm saying as "a baby could sell".If a sales rep wasn't necessary, the prospect would just buy from the VSL.Sales is ABSOLUTLEY PARAMOUNT.I'm simply talking about what we're actually EXPECTING from the sales department.Which, speaking of.Let's talk about this "spoon fed" idea.That term gets thrown around constantly to shut up any rep who dares complain about lead quality.The problem is it vever gets defined.Why?Becauseeeeeeeee...it can't be.Pay attention to this:If a sales rep is REQUIRED to close the deal...it can't logically be "spoon fed."If it really was a free lunch, the rep wouldn't be necessary in the first place.The fact that the prospect WON'T buy WITHOUT the rep PROVES the rep is doing REAL work."Spoon fed" is a manufactured accusation.It's a loony toon, @$$-backwards rhetorical trap that people use to keep reps from pushing back on broken upstream systems.Are some reps lazy and looking for excuses? Of course, not denying it.But that's not what's being addressed here.What IS being addressed is the false binary the gooroos love to tought.EITHER you're "spoon fed"...OR you're fighting tooth and nail through 47 objection handles to wrestle a "yes" out of someonewho was never qualified [or ready to talk to a sales rep] to begin with.Those aren't the only two options they give you.BUT, there is a third one.The one they hope you don't notice because you're too busy giving in to the gaslighting that they're "spoon-feeding" you.And suprise.It's building bulletproof systems. It's DQ'ing bad fits early and hard.And it's EDUCATING prospects FULLY before the calls.Make sure the people getting on the phone with your closer are ACTUALLY the right fit.Do that, and guess what? Your closes actually start LOOKING like they're being spoon-fed.Which, by the way, is what it's SUPPOSED to look like,especially when a good rep is operating inside a REAL system.Stop constricting the lifeblood of your organization by lumping marketing's job onto your sales team and then blaming the team for the result.Take the manufactured pressure OFF.Build proper systems that are HARD to mess up and treat your sales team like a sales team, not a super hero.And then watch the industry-standard close rate double overnight.