Whiteboard Selling: Empowering Sales Through Visuals

Foreword

Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.

—Walt Disney

Knowledge is power. Prior to the early 1990s, salespeople had it—buyers didn't. Today the tables have turned and buyers can now get information about your products and services whenever they need it, thanks to the Internet.

Allow me to expand on this. A commonly held belief among many executive leadership teams is that the keys to a good sales force are: (1) to make sure they have deep product knowledge and (2) that they can deliver a compelling pitch about their products and services. Operating on those beliefs, sales organizations developed deeply ingrained cultures where product training was mandated, centrally prepared and tightly controlled sales decks were developed, and specific step-by-step sales processes were implemented. There was a great deal of focus on the delivery of the sales pitch, and a bevy of feature- and function-rich materials provided as leave-behinds. These methods were effective during most of the twentieth century because salespeople were the most common source of information for buyers. It just made sense to create a business process at the heart of which was control of the information flow to buyers through sellers.

Unfortunately, the preferences of buyers (particularly executive ones) have changed. Due in large part to the Internet, the pendulum has shifted and buyers are often more informed about the products and services ...