The selling environment has never been more challenging. Sales professionals at all levels are increasingly challenged with changing buyer behaviors, difficulty reaching prospective buyers given today’s voicemail technologies, frazzled purchasers who are too busy to talk, procurement demanding price concessions, demands to provide value while maintaining lower costs, high expectations for customer service, and a myriad of other issues. Despite all of this, there has never been a better time to leverage all of the new selling tools and technologies that are available in today’s digital age. Sales professionals have access to comprehensive CRM systems, competitive information, direct insights into what their customers are thinking based on social media (e.g., LinkedIn, Twitter), and information feeds like Google Alerts. The simple message is that today’s technologies must be integrated with effective selling techniques to transform a prospect into a loyal customer.

Across all industries, successful sales executives are recognizing that they need to have an effective strategy that deals with the constantly changing preferences of today’s buyers. I recently had a conversation with a leading print industry sales executive, and he told me that Jill Konrath’s book entitled Snap Selling serves as the core foundation for his sales strategy. If you haven’t yet read this book, I advise you to consider doing so—the fundamental principles that Konrath shares are worth taking the time to understand.

Konrath’s basic premise is that all salespeople are dealing with the “frazzled customer syndrome.” This simply means that most of the people sales reps are attempting to reach are crazy busy. They have too much to do and not enough time to get it done, and this makes them impatient, easily distracted, and extremely demanding. According to Konrath, a prospective buyer will ask himself/herself the following questions when deciding whether to do business with your firm: