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‘High performing salespeople are like rocket fuel!’
A Sales History Where did your sales techniques come from?
And where are they going?It is a brief review of sales research dating back to 1864 and notably the seminal research conducting into sales and selling in 1922, 1925 and 1927. Most sales training - today - still HPLQDWHV�IURP�WKRVH�¿QGLQJV�
A Sales History is the conclusion of a meta-study of 43 popular sales WUDLQLQJ�SURJUDPPHV��,W�LGHQWL¿HG� 10 selling skills and three moderating traits most observed in a high value, multi-step frontline sale.
©"2010&2013"Andrew"Priestley"|""www.thesalesprofile.com"""www.andrewpriestley.com"""The"Coaching"Experience" 1"
Andrew"Priestley""A"History"of"Sales"Where do your sales techniques come from?
And where are they going?
In"this"article"
Award winning business coach, Andrew Priestley, provides an excellent insight into the way
and why we sell by looking into the recent past to see where contemporary selling strategies
come from. If you want to get to the bottom of why old-style selling feels so wrong, then you
must read this article, as it provides a great foundation for selling authentically.
©"2010&2013"Andrew"Priestley"|""www.thesalesprofile.com"""www.andrewpriestley.com"""The"Coaching"Experience" 2"
Before"we"start"
Sales training is a multi-billion dollar per annum industry. Its goal is to dramatically enhance
the performance of sales people in all industries. To gain a better understanding of how to
benefit from this, it’s worth asking the following questions:
• Where does this training come from?
• Does it work?
• How do you know? !
This article focuses on more ‘complex’ sales such as high value, multi- step, face-to-face
sales, i.e. consulting, one-to-one services, real estate and advertising. Whilst much of what we
cover here overlaps with ‘simple’ impulse retail sales, the focus of this article will be on the
more relevant sales training history to sales professionals. !
Andrew Priestley
Grad Dip Psych, B.Ed
August 2014
©"2010&2013"Andrew"Priestley"|""www.thesalesprofile.com"""www.andrewpriestley.com"""The"Coaching"Experience" 3"
My"first"sales"experience"
When I was about 6 or 7 we lived at the back of a golf course and I used to fossick for golf
balls in the scrub and then sell them back to the golfers for sixpence. (That’s how old I am!)
When I was a little older – about 11 - I sold salt and pepper ornaments door-to-door.
When I was in my late 20s I formally learnt to sell when I sold prestige real estate.
I did a weeklong REIQ Fast Start Course (Real Estate Industry Queensland, Australia) for
estate agents; and then successfully sat the Agents and Auctioneers exam. Most of the training
focused on the legal and compliance requirements for listing and selling property. The rest of
the training was on cold calling (listing properties), handling objections (presenting) and
closing (contracts).
I even topped my class for the sales training and the Agents exam.
Back at work we had a weekly sales training session and the emphasis was on listing, closing
and settling contracts.
I was told to read two books – one by Frank Bettger and the other by Tom Hopkins. Bettger
was probably the most successful life insurance salesman of his time in the 30s and 40s, and
Tom Hopkins sold real estate and became a millionaire by the age of 27 and then a high
profiled worldwide sales trainer and sales speaker in the 70s and 80s.
Frank Bettger’s How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling (1947) is old school
and somewhat dated in the examples, but still a fabulous book on human psychology and the
skills of prospecting and closing.
I loved Tom Hopkins’ The Art of Selling which was a fabulous resource because it armed you
with an amazing arsenal of sales weapons. It was like owning a bazooka.
But did all that input and training work?
The answer is: sometimes. And that bothered me.
For me, it wasn’t consistent. I had topped my sales training course and was performing
textbook closes and yet people still didn’t buy. I investigated, I found explicit needs, I flushed
out objections – they wanted it, they needed it - and still they didn’t buy. So, if I received
world-class cutting edge training why weren’t people buying?
What wasn’t working for me or at all?!
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I honestly think I was on the tail end of an approach to sales that is darkly satirized in the
movie Glengarry Glenross. I was taught ABC – Always Be Closing. But two incidents
changed my approach to selling:
• I had a client who was desperate to sell. A buyer made a ridiculously low offer on the
property and I was required to present every offer to the client. I sought my sales
managers’ input and he insisted I had to ‘close’ the deal if I wanted a result on the
sales board that month. I ‘closed’ the deal and the house sold. In this case, the sales
training worked and I got paid a good commission … but I felt lousy.
• Another time I overheard a woman who walked
into the agency to enquire about property.
She told the agent on duty that her husband had
arthritis in the hips and that she was looking for a
single level dwelling on a flat block. The agent
drove her out to a two-story home on a sloping
block. Apparently after pulling up outside that property she asked to be driven back to
the agency. She left. The salesperson was angry at the woman but I realized that he
was using a textbook approach: show a few bad properties first to make the one you
had in mind seem so much better by contrast.
The first incident taught me to! work for my real client – the vendor – and not for my sales
manager and not for the buyer.!
The second example taught me the importance of context and to spend more time genuinely
finding out what my customer actually wanted and why BEFORE I pitched a solution.
If I honestly couldn’t help them I referred to agents who I thought could. And here’s the
point:
Even though I began my sales career as textbook accurate my experience was terrible.
In contrast to the REIQ sales techniques, I was taught a bunch of industry-specific techniques
with the assurance that ‘this is what works and this is how you do it’.
As an example, show the dogs. A prospect comes into the agency and you find out what they
want and then you show them two really crappy houses. The house you intended to show
them – by contrast – looks amazing. If it works – great. If it doesn’t it’s a tremendous time
waster and the prospect hates it.
Work for your real client
– not for your sales
manager and neither for
your buyer.
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It was easy to learn the techniques but I personally struggled to feel confident using them.
And some techniques I felt very uncomfortable and unethical using.
For a long time I believed that my success lay in mastering those techniques. Thankfully
we’ve moved on from this approach. (I hope.)
I knew people who these techniques worked for and placed them high on the leader boards
but I did not want to sell like them or be like them.
It became very important for me to understand where the selling tools being recommended
came from. Over time I distinguished between books about sales techniques and sales training
methodology; and sales research and sales theory.
Interest"in"Selling"
From the perspective of sales strategies in the 21st
Century, the interest in effective sales and selling
techniques stem from the developments of the late 19th
and early 20th century.
Sales theory coincided with the advent of mass
production; the increase in disposable income; and banking.
Mass production - the ability to produce a lot more - increased the need to sell a lot more of
what was produced to an ever-increasing consumer market.
In !the US the average annual income in 1900 was !about $480 pa. Ten years later it was about!
$1500. (Check out Consumer Price Index and Inflation Calculators) but what had also
increased was disposable income.
The three industries most interested in advertising and selling were real estate, cars and
insurance. In the early 20th Century these industries invested heavily in discovering ways to
market, sell and make people buy their products. Around this time research into selling began.
"
"
"
"
"
Genuinely find out what your
customer wants and why
BEFORE you pitch a
solution.
©"2010&2013"Andrew"Priestley"|""www.thesalesprofile.com"""www.andrewpriestley.com"""The"Coaching"Experience" 6"
Sales"Research"
Formal sales research only really began after 1898 and it coincided with the development of
applied psychology and research into human behaviour. Believe it or not, sales research
actually peaked in the 1920s. Of course there has been consistent sales research over the last
90 years but most of it confirms what was clearly identified in the early 1920s.
"
Sales"Theory"
The research was intended to discover a theory of selling: why people buy; and how to make
people buy.
One key sales theory was the Hierarchy of Effects that has influenced sales training for over
70 years. It suggests that there is a hierarchy to buying and that it occurs in a predictable
sequence. Success lies in understanding that behaviour and sequence.
Attention Interest Desire Action (AIDA) was first proposed in 1898 by E St Elmo Lewis was
influenced by the Hierarchy of Effects. It suggests that if you attract attention, and build
interest and desire the customer will take action and purchase.
AIDA was not a theory of selling. It was actually a copywriting technique used in print
advertising. It was never intended for personal selling but somehow it was lifted across to
sales and is still taught as a personal selling system.
Most people don’t have a theory of selling that makes sense. What they have is a grab bag of
techniques.
The research conducted in the 1920s set out to discover if those techniques worked. A lot of
that research was funded by the real estate, automotive and insurance industries and found it’s
way into books.
"
Sales"Books"
Books on selling only started appearing in the late 1880s. The books were initially a
collection of sales tips and techniques. John Patterson (Gitomer, 2004) is credited as being
the father of American salesmanship. He sold cash registers.
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He wrote a book in 1887 called How I sell National cash registers (1887) and he identified a
four-phase sequence - essentially a sales process:
• Approaching a customer
• Demonstrating
• Objections
• Closing
"
Sales"Training"
Patterson provided training to match each stage in the process – and we still pretty much have
this training framework with us today. Jeffery Gitomer (2004), somewhat of an expert in
Patterson, has called this the traditional selling system.
However it has been repackaged and rebranded, essentially most high value sales follow
Patterson’s model. There are some sales systems that are deemed non-traditional, i.e. David
Sandler, but in my opinion they have added to, subtracted from or altered the sequence.
In any case, Patterson had suggested sales is a predictable sequence of observable and
measurable elements and a set of trainable skills that result in a sale.
There were a large number of books on selling published from 1920 onwards.
The"Sales"Trail"
In 1922, Frank Bettger started training as an insurance salesman. Frank Bettger wrote the best
seller How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling in 1947.
The need for sale training snowballed in the 1950s after the Second World War with the
advent of the baby boom and the manufacturing boom. Sales training became a legitimate
industry in its own right in the 1950 and 1960s (as too, did the advertising industry).
Tom Hopkins started working in real estate in the 1960s and wrote The Art of Selling in 1982.
Hopkins had been trained in techniques he learned from his mentors in the 1960s and 70s …
and they learned from theirs from mentors in the 1950s.
When I learned to sell real estate both of these books were recommended reading.
©"2010&2013"Andrew"Priestley"|""www.thesalesprofile.com"""www.andrewpriestley.com"""The"Coaching"Experience" 8"
Once you start looking at a lot of sales books in chronological order, and following their
references backwards, you end up in the 1920s. It seems sales theory taught in the 1970s and
80s was based on the sales theory of the 1940s and 1950s which was based on the sales
research developed in the 1920s. The question is: was that original research correct? We come
to this soon.
From 1960-1975 in America and Australia the aluminum siding/cladding salesmen
epitomized everything that was dirty, rotten and
underhanded about selling largely because of Hire
Purchase and Credit Finance.
Basically, a salesman could legally stitch up a client
for thousands of dollars of debt without them
realizing. Loads of people lost their homes. The real
sale became the finance package and the trail commissions or finance load ups.
It got so bad that the industry was regulated. Other industries that used HP finance: real estate,
cars sales and insurance industries were also regulated. The question was: who taught you to
sell like that?
Meta&analysis"
In 1998, I read a range of research papers and conducted a meta-analysis of 12 very popular
selling systems (see Appendix). It became obvious that success in selling does not come down
to just one behavior.
The literature reinforces the idea that there is a sequence of sales skills and infers success
occurs if you use techniques at the appropriate time in the appropriate order. For example: try
to close the sale before you demonstrate your product. This doesn’t work.
The literature was a false silver lining in an overcast sky.
Photocopying"
The biggest tussle of the 1970s was between Xerox and IBM who had dominated the
photocopying industry. Interestingly, the sales training of the day was not resulting in
significant market share so both IBM and Xerox commissioned separate studies into sales
training.
The sales techniques you and
I were taught as cutting edge
actually reverse as the value
of the sale
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One landmark study that stands out is Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling/Huthwaite (1986). SPIN
focuses on what sales people do in the process of a sale. Over a period of 12 years, Rackham
researched over 35000 high value sales calls on five continents.
His key observation is that the many of the sales techniques deemed cutting edge actually
reverse as the value of the sale increases. This is because as the value increases, so does the
perception of risk (and in this case the perception that risk equals the wastage or loss of
money).
What makes Rackham so interesting is he actually explored the origin of most sales
techniques. Importantly, he was able to trace most of modern sales techniques back to
research conducted by Dr E K Strong Junior at Colombia and then Stanford University in the
early 1920s.
Dr"E"K"Strong"
Dr Edward Kellogg Strong Junior was an applied psychologist and he is famous for the
Strong Interest Inventory (1927): an occupational assessment tool and still the world’s
benchmark tool over 70 years later. Strong’s interest in analysis is so scholarly and extensive
that it is impossible to do anything in the field that does not have some basis in Strong’s
research.
For a very short time in the early 1920s, Strong worked at the Colombia University on sales
and advertising. He also joined the faculty of the newly started Graduate School of Business
at Stanford and wrote several books on sales and advertising.
His methodology appears to have been a meta-analysis of available sales literature: observing
and analysing sales people, and identifying their key behaviours.
His findings appeared in The Psychology of Selling (1925) and The Psychology of Selling and
Advertising (1927) and The Psychology of Selling Life Insurance (1927) and the Psychology
of Business (1938).
Strong is often credited with coming up with AIDA (1925) but AIDA was in fact first put
forward by E St Elmo Lewis in 1898. AIDA has evolved into Attention, Interest, Desire,
Conviction, Action (Clyde Bedell 1940). (Barry & Howard 1990).
Strong was an advocate of the Hierarchy of Effects: cognitive (Think) – affective (Feel) –
conative (Act) so it made sense to tailor his observations in accordance with that theory.
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A criticism of AIDA is that it doesn’t provide a good definition of cognitive (thinking,
intellect) and affect (feelings); whether knowing and feeling actually lead to doing; and that
they are in fact sequential.
You should note that Strong actually revised many of his earlier findings (1927). For
example, high pressure selling does not work for high value sales. Notably his earlier
enthusiasm for AIDA waned. AIDA is still taught as a frontline sales technique today.
My only guess is that the industries that sponsored his initial research had in the meantime
invested in sales training and published materials and simply were not happy to write-off all
that effort. I am guessing that it worked enough of the time to result in the decision to let it
stand.
What"did"Strong"identify?"
Strong wasn’t the only researcher but he is the principal one cited in Rackham’s research.
Strong is also credited with:
• Closing techniques (Always Be Closing).
• Sales is a number game
• Start at the top
• Ask open/closed questions
• Rapport building skills
• Handle objections !
Strong also identified:
• There are implicit and explicit needs for why people buy. Top sellers focus on
identifying and investigating a buyer’s explicit needs; poor sellers focus on what they
guess or assume the customer wants – implicit needs. It therefore takes time and effort
to investigate needs. That hasn’t changed.
• Success is linked to meeting buyer and seller goals. These should be: !
• i. explicit!
• ii. commonly agreed
• !iii. unequivocal!
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• iv. specific (sales, purchasing, advertising) objectives !
• v. calibrated!
• vi. testable... rather than implied, unilateral, subjective, ad hoc, !and untested.
• Strong identified a buyer focus and a seller focus. Strong assumed that the sales was in
the control of the seller.
Was"he"right?"
Three key studies are worth mentioning.
Rackham (1986) agreed with Strong that top sellers focus on the buyer’s explicit needs and
poor sellers focus on the seller’s implicit needs. Rackham’s research showed Strong’s
techniques worked if it was a low value/low risk sale. Bear in mind that in 1920 a high value
sale was considered to be over $99.
Buy Rackham showed that as the value of the sale increases using sales techniques suggested
by Strong were more likely to ‘un-sell’ a customer. And Rackham showed that many of the
techniques we still embrace are unsupported.
As an example, rapport building. Rackham showed that much of what is taught as useful
rapport building actually turns a customer off. Rackham gives the example of a manufacturer
who saw three salespeople in a day who all tried to curry favour by initiating a conversation
about his golfing trophies.
Robert Jolles (1998) approached selling from the direction of what the buyer is doing. His
study resulted in the book Customer Focused Selling which unpacks the decision making
cycle that all buyers confront. !Jolles helped explain why even though people want something
... need it ... understand the benefit ... and can see it will work, they will still not purchase,
irrespective of the skill of the salesperson. !
Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson (1990) emphasized that the decision to buy is actually a chemical
reaction in the customer’s head which the salesperson has no control over. His book NewSell
(1990) focused only on what a seller could control.
"
"
©"2010&2013"Andrew"Priestley"|""www.thesalesprofile.com"""www.andrewpriestley.com"""The"Coaching"Experience" 12"
OK,"so"what’s"wrong"with"Strong?""
The issue is not about techniques but whether the techniques
work because of the theory that underpins his findings.
The jury is still out on the Hierarchy of Effects theory.
Strong didn’t! account for:
• The effect the value of the sale plays in making a
purchase decision i.e., high value sales.
• Differentiation between value and cost.
• Strong did identify the importance of discovering
explicit needs; however he did not focus on how to build real value for services:
“What they don’t realise is that if!they want to make a million!dollars, they have
to give people a million dollars worth of value in exchange.” Glen Carlson
• He identified the need to intensify the conviction for purchasing but not the motivation
to proceed. The insurance industry ! borrowed from his principles of pain driven
conviction (i.e., – Relax, Disturb, Relive, Close). Most recently NLP has explored
towards and away from buying motivations.
Rackham challenged many of Strong’s findings. For example, there is no research to support
the effectiveness of the ABC (Always Be Closing) technique.
Many buying responses presuppose the interaction of other elements not specified in the
research.
• ‘Increase awareness’ and ‘awareness’ are perhaps the most commonly encountered of
all sales and advertising objectives but they are
largely un-testable because they do not specify
how the increase in awareness is measured or if
awareness was the motivating catalyst or factor.
• The research did not qualify what a ‘high’ price
was; or what factors other than the role an increasing price/value play in buyer
psychology. We now know that higher price/value is linked to a higher sense of risk –
so the higher the !price the more risky the purchase feels.! Rackham proved that many
of the!‘techniques’ put forward by Strong !reverse as the price increases (i.e.,! impulse
buying, closing techniques, ! handling objections).
• There is NO research that supports the idea that strong desire or conviction to
purchase actually leads to a purchase. !
Remember: top sellers
focus on investigating and
identifying a buyer’s
explicit needs; poor
sellers focus on what they
guess or assume the
customer wants.
Strong desire and/ or
conviction to purchase do
not lead to a purchase.
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Other"variables"missed"in"the"research"
• Simple (one-step) / complex sales (multiple-steps)
• Length of sales cycle – lead times versus pressures to close; a !decision now or later
and what happens in the intervals between
• Perceived value – articulated value, the ability to articulate explicit value and match
explicit needs
• Relationships – ongoing, referrals etc.
• Customer sophistication
• The pre-sales tendering process – preventative maintenance to mining industry,
tendering process
• Needs analysis/feasibility – needs can take longer to ascertain than expected
• Other non-sales contact variables – for example, recent economic downturn, not
knowing the administration cycle etc.
• The role that high finance plays in the decision i.e., loans, leases.
• The role after-sales warranties play.
• Strong’s research of what occurs during a sale and not what precedes or follows it. !
One can argue that Strong has simply catalogued the steps that are observed in successful
sales that closed, rather than steps that guarantee a sale WILL close. Strong published his
findings in respected journals and in how-to-sell books. !
The Psychology of Selling Life Insurance (1927) is interesting reading, however it is
claustrophobic in its prescription of how to build conviction and has all the hallmarks of what
we would now say is high pressure selling. Some of the techniques almost feel like the
customer was being corralled into a sale.
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What’s"common"to"all"sales?"
All high value sales tend to follow Patterson’s (1887) sequence:
• Opening – rapport building skills (misunderstanding of rapport)
• Investigate needs – open/closed questions, implicit/explicit needs
• Benefits – (or Features Advantages Benefits, FAB) Confusion, based on implicit or
explicit needs
• Objections – handling or prevention? Tie downs.
• Closing techniques – trial closes, assumptive closes, alternative !closes, either/or
closes. !
Strong’s research covers the behaviours that occur during a sale. Strong omitted the steps and
their impact that occurs before (i.e., sales training, competitor analysis) and after a sale (i.e.,
post purchase reassurance). !It is unlikely that we will discover any new sequence. But we now
know that we need to refine what we do in that sequence to authentically meet the needs of
our products, markets and customers. !
The"Sales"Skill"Profile"""
Based on the meta-analysis of sales the following sequence has been identified:
Pre-sale
• Readiness
• Knowledge
• Prospecting
During the sale
• Rapport
• Investigating, Qualifying
• Presenting
• Objections
• Closing
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Post Sale
• Servicing
• Administration
Sales"Process/Systems"
The analysis concluded that while there is a general robust sales sequence for most high value
sales different sales systems might use more or less of the individual skills.
It isn’t enough to train people in selling skills. Those skills need to me matched to the typical
sales process for that business.
If sales people understand the sequence as it applies to their business and industry, sales
results would improve. It is important therefore to carefully map your sales system and to
tailor the sales skills to (their) specific context.
I am also finding that higher sales’ targets can be reached when we train people in how their
sales’ system works from both the customer and the buyer’s perspectives.
Drivers"
Proficiency in the above skill areas can be affected by three drivers:
• Attitude
• Drive
• Communication skills
It is possible to be quite skilled – technically – and yet still underperform if you have a poor
attitude and a low drive to succeed in sales.
©"2010&2013"Andrew"Priestley"|""www.thesalesprofile.com"""www.andrewpriestley.com"""The"Coaching"Experience" 16"
Summary"
Sales techniques were gathered as early as the 1860s and formal research began in the early
1900s and codified in the 1920s. Subsequent research has basically confirmed or tweaked
those early findings. You could say we haven’t discovered anything new largely because
human nature hasn’t changed much.
There is a very high likelihood that you were taught ideas that were originally codified in the
1920s - notably by E K Strong - that are assumed to work. The reality is most people have no
idea where their sales ideas and theory come from; and as we are discovering may not work
under all circumstances or any!
The SPIN Selling studies explored many of Strong’s findings and found important
contradictory distinctions:
• Sales value changes buyer behaviour significantly.
• Many of the ideas do not work under certain conditions.
• There is a sequence to high value sales that should be !incorporated into a total sales
system.
• There is a link between sales skills and attitude. Skilled people with poor attitudes can
be out sold by poorly skilled people with great attitudes.
By understanding this history of sales we have the opportunity observe and measure the value
and effectiveness of certain strategies which we may have long assumed work.
Skills, attitudes and sequence strengths can be tested and should be tested.
Sales skills should be tailored to sales systems; and the bespoke customer context for your
business or industry. All sales techniques utilised should be ethically applied and meet
compliance with the customer.
The sales techniques people have learnt are certainly accurate - and as the research shows we
probably won't find anything new.
Even social media sales techniques are an extension of relationship selling - high rapport -
Know Me, Like Me, Follow Me (Penny Power).
SPIN Selling and Customer Focused Selling (CFS) focuses on using ANY tools appropriately.
Going forward most sales people should focus on designing a sales system and training in
appropriate skills i.e., No objections selling has also been around a long time, it was one of
the first sales systems.
©"2010&2013"Andrew"Priestley"|""www.thesalesprofile.com"""www.andrewpriestley.com"""The"Coaching"Experience" 17"
When I was taught how to sell we lifted the techniques straight out of the book and were told
to apply them. This still happens.
In 2011, Google released Winning the Zero Moment of Truth and the findings of their
extensive long-term global study on online buyer behaviours. They identified a significant
growth in online searches i.e., search engine, customer ratings and reviews, social networks,
community boards etc (80%); and a significant increase in comparison shopping (54%).
They confirm that customers have unparalleled and instant information about products, they
have access to instant feedback about customer product/service pricing and purchase
experiences, and greater access to online offers, discounts and special offers. They conclude a
significant shift in customer willingness to engage online about their experiences.
Importantly, we can strongly suggest that we are fast exiting the age of caveat emptor (buyer
beware) and are fast entering an age of caveat vendor (seller beware)!
What they don’t discuss is how this is impacting offline selling. You can infer however that
customers are entering transactions with much better information and high need for relational
transparency and a willingness and the ability to take their purchasing activity online if it
isn’t.
We have also seen a shift from Web 1.0 – which essentially was taking mass marketing online
and highly transactional to Web 2.0 which is about authentic consumer engagement and
highly relational.
Notably, old style selling skills are fast disappearing online. You can infer what the knock-on
impact is on offline sales.
"
©"2010&2013"Andrew"Priestley"|""www.thesalesprofile.com"""www.andrewpriestley.com"""The"Coaching"Experience" 18"
Finally"…"
My"Way"
The lady with the arthritic hips taught me to modify the tools of rapport, qualifying and
investigating.
By contrast, I invited customers to have a pleasant sit-down discovery chat BEFORE we
looked at any property. My sales manager was angry and felt I should have been bundling
clients into the car as soon as possible. “You won’t sell anything over a cup of tea!”
He thought I was stupid until it began to work.
Where"are"you"now?"
I asked where my client was living currently, and why they wanted to move. In essence what
were they trying to get away from?
Where"are"you"now?"
We spent time discussing what they wanted instead. I know people who have bought an
amazing house in the wrong area. As example, the house you fall in love with might not be
conveniently located to schools or shops. I once advised a couple from buying a block on a
canal who had four school aged children because I knew that it involved a 5-kilometre drive
each way, twice a day. The school was close as the crow flies, but it was on the other side of
the canal! My sales manager thought I was nuts, but that family bought a home that was better
suited for many more reasons than a nice looking house.
What’s"stopping"you?""
I look at what is stopping you because sometimes there are legitimate reasons for why a sale
cannot proceed. For example, you cannot get finance.
"
What"needs"to"happen"in"order"to"…?"
I spend time on what needs to happen in order to move into this property and that question is
useful for you and the client. It usually identifies a list of things that are very useful in helping
©"2010&2013"Andrew"Priestley"|""www.thesalesprofile.com"""www.andrewpriestley.com"""The"Coaching"Experience" 19"
a client decide to purchase … or not. It can be applied to most sales situations.
My sales manager said it was not my role to help the client evaluate the sales obstacles …
only the sales facilitators. I was taught to make a list and help the client determine all the
reasons for buying and give no help for the reasons why they shouldn’t. Then whatever they
came up with handle them as objections.
What"happened"…"long"term?"
(Short term my income was stretched and things were tight.) Long term I got a reputation as a
good salesperson to talk to about buying a house. A lot of the people I invested time with did
not buy anything. But they referred.
One big question with a high value purchase is: Is there something better out there? In real
estate is the house of my dreams around the corner! By being thorough I could tell someone
the house of there dreams was or wasn’t available. And if I knew where it might be I would
refer to caring providers.
The result was years after I had left real estate I still had people seeking me out to buy a
house!
"
The"key"to"success"
There is no one key to success, really. I found that high value sales follow a predictable
sequence. And they require a predictable skill set. That’s why I created the Sales Profile. It
rates your strengths in selling and you can then match that to your sales process with greater
clarity. The Sales Profile shows you where you need to improve, and where your sales
process needs tweaking.
©"2010&2013"Andrew"Priestley"|""www.thesalesprofile.com"""www.andrewpriestley.com"""The"Coaching"Experience" 20"
"
The"Sales"Profile"
The Sales Profile is a 50-item questionnaire designed to rate your competency in 13 sales
skills linked to success in a high value sale. Respondents complete a questionnaire and
receive a comprehensive and personalized 20-page report.
It clearly and easily identifies areas for training. In the above diagram there is a horizontal
pink zone around the 70% mark. If the vertical bars are inside that pink zone then you have a
good set of sales skills. If the bars are outside that pink zone – high or low – they are sales
training targets. As an example the above person needs help with Prospecting (if Prospecting
is required as an integral part of his role.)
It is also used in conjunction with matching skills to your typical sales process.
Finally, it is useful in deciding how to measure performance in a sales function.
You can access the sales profile at www.thesalesprofile.com
©"2010&2013"Andrew"Priestley"|""www.thesalesprofile.com"""www.andrewpriestley.com"""The"Coaching"Experience" 21"
Further"Reading"
Bettger, Frank (1947). How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling.
Hopkins, Tom (1983) The Art of Selling.
Jolles, Robert (1992) Customer Focused Selling
Rackham, Neil (1985) SPIN Selling.
Underhill, Pace (1996) Why we buy?