a history of sales

“Fascinating if you are in sales.”

A History of Sales

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Andrew"Priestley"A"History"of"Sales"Where do your sales techniques come from?

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.


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

October 2013

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 successful 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 exams.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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. 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.

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.

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.


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

• 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.

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.


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.

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

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.

Summary

Sales techniques were gathered as early as the

1880s and research began to be formally codified

in the 1900s and peaked in the 1920s. Subsequent

research has basically confirmed or tweaked

existing findings.

You were probably 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.

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.

Finally …

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 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.

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

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?

a history of sales

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