Earlier this week, a former colleague and I were discussing the challenges of “virtual B2B selling” and he quickly declared the real issue was “virtual B2B buying” – with which I absolutely agree.  The pandemic has only accelerated buying issues on the customer side.  Let me explain why.  This conversation reminded me of an experience from the beginning of this year. Prior to COVID-19 (and my current position), I ran a series of workshops for the sales managers at several clients during their annual sales kickoff.

The objective was for the sales managers to develop their version of the right questions to ask account teams when coaching and inspecting opportunities. Senior executives were concerned with inconsistent (and insufficient) adoption of the questions they were given in previous sales training. In short, these executives wanted the sales managers to develop and then own the questions, which would increase the likelihood they would consistently ask them.

Early this year, I was contacted by Udemy and asked if I would develop an online B2B Negotiations course for sellers they could offer to their business clients.  I was humbled to be asked and excited by the prospect of working with this world-class organization (they have over 50M subscribers).

Little did I realize how challenging the current pandemic would make the production, but the course was officially launched late last week, and you can find it at The Painless Negotiation.  My goal was to impart my best thinking and experience on current B2B negotiations in short clips of less than 5 minutes as well as have the student immediately apply those concepts to a real live deal (which is the best context to promote learning).

I hope I have been successful in achieving both.  If you or your team are interested, please check it out!

Good Selling!

Steve