Selling Strategies

Within the professional buyer/seller environment, preferences and practices have altered dramatically since the spring of 2020.

Within the professional buyer/seller environment, preferences and practices have altered dramatically since the spring of 2020.

Mike Montague interviews John Livesay on How to Succeed at Better Selling Through Storytelling.

Sandler Training spends more than 92,000 hours per year training companies and individuals how to strengthen sales, leadership and management skills.

The CEO of an IT services company recently shared his belief with me that every two years for one hour, his prospects are so angry with their existing supplier that his company had a chance to take the business away from his competitor. This is not an unusual belief. He was talking about demand fulfillment, which is safe and easy

I read an article recently that slammed sales people for using the "hard sell" tactic of asking for a decision at the end of a presentation. To paraphrase David Sandler, don't make presentations without a prior commitment to make a "no" or "yes" at the end of the presentation. Two valuables a sales person possesses are information and time. Making presentations without a commitment by a prospect to make a choice between "no" and "yes" at the end is a waste of both. Now, there are two instances when asking for a decision at the end of a presentation is a hard sell tactic

A client recently shared about a road trip he and his boss had taken to do walk-in calls. The salesperson was being encouraged to start going further afield to look for new business opportunities so he created a list of potential companies and off they went. The boss was essentially going for the ride to be of support so he allowed things to unfold as they did.

"Can you get me an estimate?"

"Why don't you write up a proposal for me?"

"Well, just get me an outline of your plans for us and we'll get back to you."

Do these sound familiar? Possibly a "free consulting" nightmare that sales professionals see way too often?

If you simply differentiate yourself as saying you're "the best" sales professional out there, then you can look forward to clients and prospects who will wander around to see if one of the millions of other "bests" out there are cheaper. This rule is simple. See what your competition does, and then make sure that what you do is incomparable. Having a unique game plan will help set you on the path to one-of-a-kind success.

The other day, people in the training center were discussing how they go about building trust. The group shared lots of ideas, and every idea they shared would probably do the trick. When all was said and done, we had a list of about twenty things people could do to build trust.

Recently, I found myself absorbed with the notion of influence. I wondered aloud who the great influencers of our time are, then wondered further how each had reached their influential positions. A voice in the room, that of a top trusted advisor, shot back, "The number-one salesman in the world is a kid who wants ice cream!" We laughed.. Yet buried in that answer was delicious truth.

"Equal business stature, that's all I want--to be treated as an equal. I have earned that right. Yet to a gatekeeper or prospect, I am the lowest form of humanity." So lamented a friend of mine over a recent lunch of burgers, fries and a heaping plate of frustrated sales efforts