You are the product
We’re all in the selling business whether we like it or not.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lawyer or an accountant,
a manager or a politician, an engineer or a doctor. We all
spend a great deal of our time trying to persuade people to
buy our product or service, accept our proposals or merely
accept what we say.
For many years as a sales manager, I would only hire the stereotypical sales representative. You know the type—on a human relations continuum or scale of zero to ten, with the ten representing a candidate who is totally gregarious and outgoing and the zero, someone who is introverted with few people skills, I’d always recruit the ten. As an advisor to businesses and professional service firms on how to build an effective sales team, I would also council my clients to hire “tens.” Big mistake!
The Evolving Role of Inside Sales and Customer Service Personnel
Canned or scripted sales approaches are rarely successful, because one size does not fit all in selling.
Correct me if I am wrong, but there is nothing more powerful in a business-to-business sales letter than a credible testimonial from a person in your prospect’s peer group.
Selling–a word that strikes terror in writers and professionals. We love to write. We love our work. We love to speak. We hate to SELL.
In my opinion, the most overrated topic in sales training is the subject of closing. In year’s past, it seems the object of most sales training courses was to fill the heads of participants with as many closing techniques as possible. The logic was simple, if the “Ben Franklin” close didn’t work, you could rummage around in your head for the the “secondary question” technique, the “order-blank” method or the “forced choice” close to tie off your sale. Selling in the old school of training was basically learning 54 or 84 ways to close.
Achievement of selling “excellence” is most often earned rather
than learned. Outstanding professionals continuously seek to
hone their skills from mistakes made and lessons learned in
pursuit of success. Professional sales people in search of
extraordinary selling competence are no exception.