Was your response something like, “Gee, we started offering that service six months ago?” Then why didn’t you tell that to this customer? Here’s why: You made the common mistake of assuming that once you have sold a client on your company, the client will stay sold unless something goes seriously wrong.

“Are we a good match?” is every customer’s most important question about your company. You cannot answer it before you have uncovered, understood, and agreed upon the customer’s needs. “Sell yourself” first by demonstrating that you care about those needs. You’ll be amazed at how much more effectively you can then sell your company.

Your competitors are continuously un-selling your company. So you must continuously sell it.

The fact is that your competitors are busy trying to un-sell your company every day. They do it by advertising, by direct mail, by Internet marketing, and by direct sales in their own calls on your clients. That’s why you must make this sales strategy a rule to keep selling your company in every sales call.

Remember: Every year, in every call you make on clients or prospects, they become either more or less sold on your company.

Naturally, you won’t tell your entire “company story” each time you call on a customer who already knows you well. But here is what you should do in every call:

Describe any new products or services you offer that might conceivably interest the client now or a year from now.
Think of something new and exciting to say about your company; something that casts it in a good light. Did you have a good quarter financially? Have you made any acquisitions or acquired any new, high-profile clients? Have you hired any impressive new people?
Present this updated information about your company with the right timing and in the right manner. The right time is immediately after you have asked questions to build rapport and to uncover any new needs that may have arisen since your last visit. The right manner is simple. Just say: “Let me quickly cover some new information about (my company).”

If you don’t sell your company on every call, the competition will un-sell you. You will miss opportunities. And you may hear those awful words, “I didn’t know you did that!”

In The Field:

After attending an Action Selling sales training workshop, Karen Caligiuri of the United States Postal Service returned to work and explained one important insight to her district managers: “At USPS, we’re striving to overcome bad press and past perceptions,” she said. “So every time you visit with a customer, you should take the time to relay a positive note about USPS.”

It isn’t only your competitors who can un-sell you to customers. If your organization suffers from a negative image in the marketplace, whatever the reason, it is especially important to use your sales skills and “sell your company” on every single sales call. Otherwise, the customer’s bad impressions can only continue to fester.

Duane Sparks: founder of Action Selling. Over 300,000 are now top sellers from Action Selling Sales Training – http://www.thesalesboard.com or 1-800-232-3485.

Here are several ideas on how you can improve your sales effectiveness at gaining customer commitments.

Always Have a Commitment Objective!

Our recent research shows that nearly 80% of salespeople do not understand what their primary purpose is. Your principle mission in sales is to Gain Commitment. The confusion stems from the variety of tasks we as salespeople are asked to perform. The end result is that 62% of salespeople make sales calls where there is no attempt at Gaining Commitment. One of the most important reasons why this occurs is most salespeople do not establish what we call a Commitment Objective for every sales call. This is the number one mistake that all salespeople make. Well, it’s time to change that!

Commitment Objective: A sales strategy and goal we set for ourselves to gain agreement from the customer that moves the sales process forward.

No sales call should ever be made without a Commitment Objective. If you do not have a Commitment Objective firmly planted in your mind, you will wind up being one of those 62% that don’t ask for Commitment.

In The Field:

Newly hired salespeople at Melody Inc., a Muzak Franchise, are required to make sales calls with veteran salespeople. Toward the end of one recent call, the prospect asked the veteran if he could keep the company brochure and share it with his partner. The veteran was happy to comply and began to pack up his briefcase.

The newly hired salesperson had recently gone through Action Selling Sales Training and learned about reaching a Commitment Objective. She decided that it would make sense to capitalize on the prospect’s interest and schedule the next logical step – a proposal meeting. So she said, “As a next step I would recommend that we plan another meeting with yourself and your partner. We will prepare a proposal that documents what we have discussed and the solution we recommend. How does that sound?”

You guessed it. They scheduled a proposal meeting for a week later. During the next meeting they Gained Commitment for the business.

Duane Sparks is founder of The Sales Board, a sales training company that has trained 200,000+. Visit http://www.thesalesboard.com or 1-800-232-3485

How do you know the right way to sell to a customer? You ask.

For instance, you need to know when to time your sales calls, who to call on, what to present to each individual or group who will influence the buying decision, and how the decision ultimately will be made. How do you learn all of this? You learn these answers by asking questions early in the game.

COMPETITION: Whom are you competing against for this sale? Once you know, you can ask targeted questions to draw out specific customer needs that you can resolve but your competitors can’t. And when presenting features and benefits of your products, you can lead with your specific competitive strengths.

TIME FRAME: When does the customer expect to make a buying decision? More importantly, when does the customer want to begin to reap the benefits expected from the purchase?

BUYING INFLUENCES: Who controls the budget? Who analyzes the technical aspects of your product? Who will be responsible for making your product work correctly in the organization? This information tells you which features and benefits to stress to which audience.

BUYING PROCESS: How will the buying decision actually be made? Who must be “sold” before the transaction can be completed? Which criteria will be most important in the decision?

By getting clear answers to these questions early in the process, you can develop a strategy that will shorten your sell cycle, allow you to anticipate and defuse objections that otherwise would arise later, and make a lot more sales.

IN THE FIELD:

Veteran salespeople are often astonished (and a bit embarrassed) by the brave new world that opens up to them after they learn to ask the Best Questions.

The day after an Action Selling Sales Training Workshop at Eaton Cutler-Hammer, the southern regional sales manager received an excited voicemail message from one of his account executives.

“I put one of the selling techniques of Action Selling to work today on a sales call and was amazed,” said the account exec. “By knowing how to ask the Best Questions, I uncovered additional opportunities that I never knew existed!”

Duane Sparks is chairman and founder of The Sales Board, a Minneapolis-based sales training company that has trained and certified over 200,000 salespeople.

No, you shouldn’t, and here’s why. No matter how good it is, your generic presentation casts your product or service as a commodity, not as a solution to the particular customer. Customers don’t care about your products; they care about their own problems and opportunities. They want to know that you understand their problems before you start talking about how your wares can “solve” them.

You think you have a cool product presentation? So does every competitor you’ve got.

When salespeople understand their customer’s needs before presenting their products, the presentation can be tailored to hit specific hot buttons. This also avoids many objections that commonly arise later in the sales cycle.

To find out “what to sell,” you need to exercise good questioning skills and gather information about the customer. The things you want to know fall into four categories:

Need: Ask open-ended questions to uncover problems and opportunities likely to be addressed by your products and service.

Examples: “What is the biggest problem with the current method you’re using?” “What are the consequences of not solving this problem?”

Company Issues: What is the customer’s company or department trying to accomplish with this buying decision and why is it important? “What goals has your company set regarding this?” “What will it mean to the company if you are successful?”

Personal Issues: What’s at stake for the customer himself/herself – professionally or personally? “What will it mean to you if these goals are achieved?”

Money Issues: Find out about the budget that exists for the purchase or how the expenditure would be justified. “What kind of budget have you established for this project?” Or, “What areas would you look at to justify a purchase like this?”

Once you know this, you are in a position to present your product as a solution, not just one more alternative in a sea of commodities. Instead of a classic data dump, your presentation now can be aimed at specific needs that this customer actually cares about.

In The Field:

Why do so many salespeople launch straight into their product presentations before investigating their customers’ needs?

Usually it’s because they’re flying by the seat of their pants. They lack a strategic framework to follow throughout the entire sales cycle. Sadly, delivering a canned presentation is all they really know how to do.

An account executive with Delta Industrial in Minneapolis, MN, recently summed up the advantages of adopting a coherent, unified, step-by-step approach to the sales process. “The most important thing the Action Selling Sales Training has done for me,” he said, “is to really make me think and strategize about what I am trying to accomplish in every sales call in order to move the process forward.”

Duane Sparks is founder of The Sales Board, a Minneapolis-based sales training company that has trained and certified over 200,000 salespeople. Please visit our Sales Training Site at http://www.thesalesboard.com?cpgn=568 or call 800-232-3485.

Customers won’t buy from you if they don’t like you, trust you or respect you. And they are far more likely to buy when you can position your product or service as a solution to what they perceive as an important need. Listening is the key sales skill that allows you to earn customer’s trust and uncover their needs at the same time.

Customers care more that you understand their needs than that they understand your products.

Who decides whether you’re a good listener? The customer does. And since customers can’t read your mind, they can only judge by the behavior you show them. Here are five primary indicators that determine whether customers will perceive you as a good listener:

What kind of questions do you ask? Open-ended questions (as opposed to “yes” or “no” questions) encourage the customer to talk. That must happen before you can listen. Most salespeople ask far too few open-ended questions.

How do you demonstrate your interest? Focus your questions on the customer’s interests, not your own. Why are you talking about your golf game if this person doesn’t play?

Do you take notes? If you’re so interested in what the customer is saying, why wouldn’t you take notes?

Do you summarize what you hear? If you think you have uncovered an important need, restate it to check your understanding. This not only wards off confusion, it shows that you’re paying attention.

Do you use what you’ve heard in your presentation? Your product pitch comes after you’ve listened, not before. And when you make your presentation, every feature and benefit you discuss should be tied to a need you uncovered by asking questions. That is the true test – and the true payoff – of your listening skills.

Customers won’t buy your products unless they first “buy” you. And no matter how charismatic you think you are, you can’t sell yourself to people who think you aren’t paying attention to their concerns. Never mind being interesting. Be interested.

In The Field:

A sales representative for an electrical-equipment company landed a $77,000 order thanks to the listening skills he picked up in an Action Selling Sales Training workshop.

On a call to an electrical contractor, the sales rep used open-ended questions to uncover the key needs driving the purchasing decision: The contractor needed to buy supplies at a price point that wouldn’t exceed the amount he had quoted for materials on a particular job, and he needed to buy them fast. The sales rep listened carefully, restated the needs to check his understanding and quickly submitted a bid tailored to those very requirements.

It’s hardly surprising that his was the winning bid.

Duane Sparks is chairman and founder of The Sales Board, a Minneapolis-based sales training company that has trained and certified more than 200,000 salespeople. Please visit our Sales Training Site or call 1-800-232-3485

Almost all salespeople buy in to the stall. Very few ever get the deal once they do.

What the stalling customer is really saying is this: “I’m not quite sold yet. Sell me some more.” Well then, by all means, do some more selling. But do it right. Here’s how:

Never challenge a stall. Since the customer offered no specific reason for hesitating, don’t force him to come up with one by saying something like, “What is it that you need to think about?” Challenging stalls creates conflict, not sales.

Don’t try to manipulate the customer. If you’ve learned any manipulative sales techniques, forget them. They do more harm than good. The old “feel, felt, found” method rarely worked even in its heyday, and it certainly doesn’t work today.

Identify a Universal Stall Breaker. The USB is a capability of your product or your company that minimizes the risk to the customer who buys. Every company has one. Yours might be a money-back guarantee, a no-hassle return policy, a try-and-buy arrangement, extended terms, or an unusually comprehensive warranty. Whatever this capability is, do not present it to the customer up front. Hold the USB in reserve, in case you hear a stall when you ask for commitment.

When you do hear a stall, follow this procedure:

Say, “I understand.”

Restate the product features the customer liked before the stall arose.

Present the USB.

Ask for commitment again.

It works like this: “I understand. You like ____, _____, and ____ about our product. With our _____ policy (the USB), you can try it with no risk at all. How does that sound? (Customer responds.) Would you like to go ahead with it then?”

Far too many salespeople fail to ask for commitment even once in a sales call. With this stall-breaking method, you are asking twice. And you have followed the customer’s lead by doing exactly what the stall really asked you to do: “Sell me some more.”

Believe it, you will make more sales!

In The Field:

Equity Residential is the largest apartment leasing company in the United States. In a tough economic climate, Equity decided to invest in developing the selling skills of its leasing consultants. Needless to say, these consultants often hear stalls such as, “Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you.”

Equity has a Service Promise Guarantee that minimizes the risk for customers who choose to rent. “But prior to the Action Selling Sales Training Program, we presented our Service Promise Guarantee as just another feature,” said Jonakan O’Steen, director of education and leadership development. With their eyes opened to a new way of looking at stalls, Equity’s consultants quickly identified the guarantee as their Universal Stall Breaker. That is now how they use it.

“It’s easy to get stalled when working with rentals,” O’Steen said. Or, rather, it used to be.

Duane Sparks is chairman and founder of The Sales Board, a Minneapolis-based Sales Training company that has trained and certified more than 200,000 salespeople.

This means that you need to sell yourself to the customer—by building rapport while conducting a good needs assessment—before you begin to sell your company and its capabilities. Not coincidentally, that needs assessment will also allow you to sell your company far more successfully. Why? Because you must first understand your customer’s needs, before you can answer the customer’s most important question about your company.

You must understand the customer’s needs before you can effectively sell your company.

In deciding whether to do business with you, customers have three basic questions about your company:

1. What does it do?
2. What is it known for?
3. Is your company a good match for mine?

The first two questions usually can be answered with a rehearsed sales presentation that explains what your company does and the benefits that other clients have gained from doing business with you.

The third question is most important, however, and you cannot answer it with a generic presentation that relies on standard information. To persuade customers that your company is a good match for theirs, you must tailor your answer to their specific needs.

The best way to do this is to tie your company presentation directly to needs that you uncovered earlier in the sales call. You thus are able to present your company’s capabilities as solutions to the customer’s key problems and opportunities.

For Example:

“You told me earlier that service from your current supplier is taking more than 24 hours and that this causes you problems meeting your production goals. We would be a good match for you because our service response averages less than four hours. With our company handling your service you will find it far easier to achieve your goals.”

“Are we a good match?” is every customer’s most important question about your company. You cannot answer it before you have uncovered, understood, and agreed upon the customer’s needs. “Sell yourself” first by demonstrating that you care about those needs. You’ll be amazed at how much more effectively you can then sell your company.

In The Field:

If you are in a commodity business and competing with rivals who sell on price alone, it is especially vital to tell your customers a powerful “company story” that explains why they should do business with you. For National Camera Exchange, which competes in the commodity-oriented business of photographic equipment, differentiating itself from the myriad of price-only suppliers is a daily challenge.

National Camera’s added-value proposition lies in the expertise and consulting skills of its sales force. Its equation for success or failure is simple: If the story of that consulting capability isn’t told effectively, the company loses to lower-priced competitors. Sales and training manager Sean Morgan says that an Action Selling sales training program made a world of difference. “Since more of our salespeople are telling our company story, we are posting higher numbers, and they look less like a roller coaster,” Morgan said. “When the customer needs an education on camera equipment, it is critical to sales success to show them how National Camera is a good match for their needs.”

Duane Sparks is founder of The Sales Board, a Minneapolis-based Sales Training company that has trained and certified over 200,000 salespeople.

Successful Sales Calls Have 25% More Open-Ended Questions.

Second, your questions help customers make their first key buying decision, which is whether to buy you, the salesperson. Questions build rapport and demonstrate your interest in the customer. They uncover information about the customer’s needs, who to call on, the decision-making time frame, your competition and how the customer will make a decision.

When you ask the “best” questions, customers will view you as a consultant with their best interests in mind.

Third, questions help you manage the sales call. You can control the conversation and differentiate yourself from competitors by being the best listener.

But merely asking questions isn’t enough. You need to ask “The Best Questions.” For example, asking questions that draw out needs for your product’s strengths can position you as the best or only solution for the customer’s needs.

In The Field:

Asking “The Best Sales Questions” allow you to uncover your customer’s real needs and meet them with the right solution. A sales representative from WESCO International, Inc., a $4 billion electrical equipment provider, used this selling technique learned through Action Selling Sales Training to do just that.

Great questions helped the sales rep land a new account on the first call. By zeroing in on the key needs behind a contractor’s stated requirements, he was able to craft a bid that matched those needs exactly. He won the business (a $77,000 order) and opened the door for future opportunities.

Duane Sparks is founder of The Sales Board, a Minneapolis-based sales training company that has trained and certified more than 200,000 salespeople. Please visit our Sales Training Site or call us at 800-232-3485.

In other words, leverage questions are queries that allow the salesperson to find out, from the buyer’s perspective, “What’s really in it for me?” This tells the salesperson which needs are most critical to address when presenting product features and benefits. What’s more, by clarifying the actual stakes of the decision in the customer’s mind, leverage questions serve to “turn up the emotional heat,” making the expected gains even more desirable to the buyer.

Leverage questions turn up the heat by clarifying what’s at stake for the buyer, not just the seller.

As you ask open-ended questions to investigate a customer’s needs, you will come upon some needs that seem to have a particular urgency. Whenever you suspect this is the case, ask a leverage question to confirm your hunch and clarify the situation. Examples of leverage questions: “How has this problem affected your company?” “How has it affected you, personally?” “What are the consequences if the problem continues?” “How are your customers affected?” “What opportunities does this situation represent for the company and for you?” Good leverage questions identify what’s at stake for the buyer’s company, but the very best ones aim at discovering the customer’s personal hot buttons. Unless the buyer owns the company, boosting productivity or decreasing waste are not gut issues. Here’s a gut issue: “How will I be better off if I bring this solution to my employer? Will I look like a genius? Will I get a promotion? A bonus? Some recognition I crave?”

By clarifying what’s really at stake with a business problem or opportunity, leverage questions increase the customer’s desire for a solution. And they let the salesperson know how to present a product as the right solution to the right issues.

In The Field:

Leverage questions offer the highest payoff when they are used in the context of a full-scale sales strategy – a strategy that tells you how to build up to asking such questions and what to do with the information after you’ve uncovered it. That’s what Action Selling Sales Training Workshops teach.

The national sales director of retail-photocopy giant Kinko’s puts it this way: “By learning to sell via the Action Selling sales skills process, our salespeople now know where they stand at every stage during a call and can proceed strategically. They are better able to manage a sales call from start to finish.

Duane Sparks is founder of The Sales Board, a sales training company that has trained 200,000+. Visit http://www.thesalesboard.com or 1-800-232-3485

People don’t buy product features. They buy solutions to their own needs.

Customers don’t care about your product features or even about the benefits those features offer to the world at large. Customers care about one thing only: How can you help me solve problems or seize opportunities that matter to me?

What you need is a simple, structured method for product presentations that lets you stop rambling about features that may be irrelevant to this customer and start presenting solutions to specific needs instead—solutions that are crisp, clear, brief, and to the point.

There is such a method. It’s called TFBR. Here is how it works.

T – Tie-Back: Tie the conversation back to a need you identified with your earlier questions:

“You told me earlier that you want to match the products that you stock with the unique needs of each region.”

F – Feature: Describe a product feature that meets that need:

“Our regional purchases history reporting will show you exactly what the most popular products are in each region.”

B – Benefit: Explain how that feature will serve this customer’s specific need:

“What this means to you is that you will improve service to your customers while minimizing the inventory needed at each location.”

R – Reaction: Ask for the customer’s own view of how the benefit would serve the need. This confirms that you correctly understand the need. Also, importantly, it turns the product presentation into a dialogue with the customer instead of a monologue by you:

“How will this information help you improve your business?”

Cast each product feature or capability you present in the TFBR format. And present only features that represent solutions to needs you have already uncovered and agreed upon.

The TFBR method will shorten your product presentations dramatically and make them far more powerful. Why put your customers to sleep when you can instead engage them in a problem-solving dialogue that makes them very happy they agreed to meet with you?

In The Field:

The TFBR method isn’t just for salespeople who meet clients face to face. The marketing professionals who support your company’s sales efforts can use the TFBR format to help salespeople zero in on ways to present products as solutions that address key customer needs. Marketing people should think in terms of the TFBR process when communicating product information to the sales force and to customers.

Connie Fuller, manager of human resource development at Ball Seed Company, put it this way: “When marketing presents information consistent with the Action Selling sales training concepts, it is immediately more useful to our reps. It also supports our training efforts and creates a wonderful synergy.”

Duane Sparks is chairman and founder of The Sales Board, a Minneapolis-based Sales Training company that has trained and certified more than 300,000 salespeople.

Research shows that sales presentations like this are 25 percent less effective than those in which a thorough needs assessment is followed by a summary of all of the customer’s needs. You will be far more successful if you begin by uncovering and agreeing on at least three relevant needs that the customer perceives as important. Only then should you begin a product presentation tailored to address those needs.

Never present your product until you have agreed on at least three important and relevant needs.

Here’s how to do that:

1. Ask sales questions designed to draw out the customer’s needs—specifically, problems or opportunities that can be best addressed by the unique capabilities of your company or your products.

2. Take notes while the customer talks. This shows that you’re a good listener and that you actually care.

3. Summarize and reach agreement on needs. When you believe you have uncovered at least three strong and relevant needs, summarize them and check your understanding with the customer. In this way, you reach agreement on the customer’s needs. Use this format to gain agreement:

“As I understand it, you are looking for a way to ­_____, ______, and ______. Is that correct? If the customer says no, ask more questions and do more listening. Only after the customer agrees that you correctly understand those three important needs should you begin to present the capabilities of your company and your product. You are now prepared to make that sales presentation in a far more powerful way by focusing directly on issues the customer already has agreed upon as vital problems or opportunities.

In The Field:

Financial consultant Brad Martin describes his experience with the Action Selling approach to needs identification as a revelation and a radical departure from the way he was originally trained.

Martin works for a large financial services company. Like many salespeople, he was taught to respond to each customer need as quickly as he was able to uncover it. So he would spot a need, present a product feature and benefit to address it, and then fish for another need. “That sales technique worked all right,” Martin said, “but sometimes I ran into trouble by presenting capabilities that didn’t quite match the prospect’s needs when they were considered as a whole. This meant I later had to deal with many more sales objections than necessary.”

The problem is that customer needs do not exist individually, in a vacuum. They are interrelated.

Martin learned in Act 4 of the Action Selling Sales Training Program to uncover and agree on at least three needs before presenting his solutions. “Now my sales presentations are much better focused, and fewer objections surface,” he said. “I am closing a significantly higher percentage of my prospects.”

Duane Sparks is founder of The Sales Board, a sales training company that has trained 200,000+. Visit http://www.thesalesboard.com or 1-800-232-3485

Our research has shown 76% of sales presentations are out of sync with buying decisions. When making a major purchase decision, your customer goes through a process of five sequential decisions.

1. SALESPERSON. Customers decide if they like and can trust you.
2. COMPANY. What is your company’s reputation? Is your company a good match for them?
3. PRODUCT. Is your product the right solution for their needs?
4. PRICE. Is your solution competitively priced? Is it a good value?
5. TIME TO BUY. Is now a good time for them to move forward with the purchase?

Customers will find reasons not to buy when your presentation is out of sync with their buying decisions. To increase your chances of success, you must sequence your sales presentation to follow the decisions of the customer. When you do, you’ll sell the customer on each buying decision. This is exactly how professional salespeople orchestrate their sales calls.

IN THE FIELD:

Jerry Montgomery, one of the horticultural industry’s top sales and marketing consultants, recently spoke about how the Action Selling Sales Training Program has impacted sales performance.

“Today, product and service differentiation is harder to define and communicate.” noted Montgomery. “But the right training can translate into increased sales. Action Selling is especially effective because it focuses on unique methods for uncovering the customer’s needs, resulting in a differentiated solution.”

As the playing field becomes increasingly competitive and the buyer’s time is at a premium, innovative sales skills are key to success. “And yet,” said Montgomery, “many companies provide their sales organizations with little or no sales skills training with which to meet these challenges.”

“With Action Selling,” he went on to say, “Sellers can turn to the work at hand, confident that they are utilizing the most advanced sales techniques available today. And that’s beneficial to the seller, the buyer and the bottom line!”

Duane Sparks is chairman and founder of The Sales Board, a Minneapolis-based Sales Training company that has trained and certified more than 200,000 salespeople.

Classic objections such as those are very hard to overcome when they pop up near the end of your sales call after you have presented your company and your product, and after you have expended most of your sales ammunition. But objections are far easier to handle if you uncover them earlier in the process.

An objection is the customer’s response to an unasked question.

Action Selling defines objections as the customer’s response to questions you failed to ask earlier in the sales call. If you can ask all the right questions before making your formal product presentation, you will uncover every potential objection that otherwise would come back to bite you and you can modify your sales presentation accordingly.

Here are those three classic objections again, with questions that could have exposed them before they arose:

“Your price is too high.” (Q: How much do you currently pay?)

“We’re loyal to our current supplier.” (Q: What do you like about your current supplier? What would you like to see them improve?)

“I prefer your competitor’s product.” (Q: What are the capabilities of the product you’re using now? What would you like to see added?

Does this sound obvious? Then why aren’t you doing it? Probably because, like 19 out of 20 salespeople, you don’t plan to do it and you don’t prepare good questions prior to a sales call.

But suppose you do ask excellent questions and an unforeseen objection surfaces anyway? In that case, just follow the same rule: Ask questions to understand the objection, try to quantify it, and look for possible solutions.

Objections are the customer’s response to unasked questions. Ask The Best Sales Questions early in the sales call, and customize your sales presentation so that you’ll hear far fewer objections later. If you do hear an objection late in the call, figure out the question you should have asked-and ask it now.

In The Field:

“We had never prepared questions in advance of a sales call before,” says Brent Bearden, Manager of National Sales at Summit Biotechnology. Now, thanks to the Action Selling sales training program, Bearden says, “we uncover the information we need to gear our presentations in a way that prevents sales objections from arising.”

In one case, good questioning delivered an even greater benefit. Summit, a division of billion-dollar agricultural giant Monfort Inc., sells animal sera and related products to pharmaceutical companies. Questions designed to uncover and thoroughly understand one customer’s resistance to a particular product led Summit to develop an extremely successful new product that anticipated and overcame the objection. “We would have missed out on a multi-million-dollar opportunity without Action Selling,” Bearden said.

The best way to deal with objections is to ask good questions early in the sales call; questions that reveal and quantify potential objections, allowing you to search for solutions.

Duane Sparks is founder of The Sales Board, a sales training company that has trained 200,000+. Visit http://www.thesalesboard.com or 1-800-232-3485

Most salespeople devote the majority of their selling time to “pitching” their products or services. Here’s the problem: Whether prospects realize it or not, the first thing they decide is whether they like and trust you. If you bury your prospect beneath a mountain of product features while they are making the salesperson decision, you’re probably in deep trouble.

If prospects make the salesperson decision while you’re droning on about product features, their answer will be “No!” When prospects like and trust you, everything else about the sales process becomes much easier. So how can you sell yourself better? Here are a few ideas:

Demonstrate your interest. Quit trying so hard to be interesting. Be interested instead. Ask questions to learn about the prospect. Don’t talk too much about yourself.

Show that you understand. People have a strong need to feel understood. Ask questions, listen and make sure you understand your prospect’s needs. Restate the prospect’s needs so they know you understand.

Use an organized procedure for sales calls. Action Selling’s step-by-step sales skill procedure keeps you on track and helps you appear methodical, thorough and professional. Your professional approach will sell you.

Prospects ‘buy’ the salesperson during every sales call – or they don’t. The other buying decisions the prospect makes are far more likely to go in your favor when you are effective at selling yourself.

In The Field:

Equity Corporate Housing of Chicago, a division of the largest owner of apartments in the United States, trained and certified their sales groups and executive team on the Action Selling™ process in 2002. Outstanding results followed, beginning with a 13.5% increase in apartment rentals in the first six months after the training.

But why did Equity choose Action Selling Sales Training in the first place? Because Equity’s regional sales manager first ‘bought’ the salesperson. “The Sales Board training consultant we worked with was outstanding,” she said. “He asked all the right questions and was flexible with what he had to offer. We trusted him and he was honest with us. His knowledge and understanding of our situation was a major reason why we chose Action Selling. He used Action Selling.”

Duane Sparks is founder of The Sales Board, a Minneapolis-based sales training company that has trained and certified over 200,000 salespeople. For more information about this author/company, please visit our Sales Training Site or call 800-232-3485.