a sales history - wordpress.com · i was told to read two books – one by frank bettger and the...

‘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.


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


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?!


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.


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.


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.

The sales techniques you and

I were taught as cutting edge

actually reverse as the value

of the sale


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. !

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.


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 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.


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.

"


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


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 sales history - wordpress.com · i was told to read two books – one by frank bettger and the...

Documents