a history of sales
DESCRIPTION
Do you know where your sales tools come from? Ever wondered where things like trial close and handling objections came from? In this is a report award winning business coach Andrew Priestley explores where some of your sales techniques and tools really come from. and if they even work.TRANSCRIPT
“Fascinating if you are in sales.”
A History of Sales
Where do your sales techniques come from?Award winning business coach Andrew Priestley and a 2011 Salesperson of the Year ISMM/BESMA winner gives a fascinating history of sales techniques. Believe it or QRW�LI�\RX�ZHUH�WUDLQHG�WR�VHOO�\RX�SUREDEO\�OHDUQHG�VDOHV�VNLOOV�WKDW�ZHUH�FRGL¿HG�LQ�the 1920s and are still taught whether they work or not! Fascinating!
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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.
©"2010&2013"Andrew"Priestley"|""www.thesalesprofile.com"""www.andrewpriestley.com"""" 2"
Before we start
Sales training is a multi-billion dollar per annum
industry. Its goal is to dramatically enhance the
performance of sales people in all industries.
To gain a better understanding of how to benefit
from this, it’s worth asking the following
questions:
• Where does this training come from?
• Does it work?
• How do you know?
This article focuses on more ‘complex’ sales such
as high value, multi- step, face-to-face sales, i.e.
consulting, one-to-one services, real estate and
advertising. Whilst much of what we cover here
overlaps with ‘simple’ impulse retail sales, the
focus of this article will be on the more relevant
sales training history to sales professionals.
Andrew Priestley
Grad Dip Psych, B.Ed
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.
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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.)
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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.
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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?
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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.
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A criticism of AIDA is that it doesn’t provide a
good definition of cognitive (thinking, intellect)
and affect (feelings); whether knowing and
feeling actually lead to doing; and that they are in
fact sequential.
You should note that Strong actually revised
many of his earlier findings (1927). For example,
high pressure selling does not work for high value
sales. Notably his earlier enthusiasm for AIDA
waned. AIDA is still taught as a frontline sales
technique today.
My only guess is that the industries that
sponsored his initial research had in the
meantime invested in sales training and
published materials and simply were not happy to
write-off all that effort. I am guessing that it
worked enough of the time to result in the
decision to let it stand.
What did Strong identify?
Strong wasn’t the only researcher but he is the
principal one cited in Rackham’s research. Strong
is also credited with:
• Closing techniques (Always Be Closing).
• Sales is a number game
• Start at the top
• Ask open/closed questions
• Rapport building skills
• Handle objections
Strong also identified:
• There are implicit and explicit needs for
why people buy. Top sellers focus on
identifying and investigating a buyer’s
explicit needs; poor sellers focus on what
they guess or assume the customer
wants – implicit needs. It therefore takes
time and effort to investigate needs. That
hasn’t changed.
• Success is linked to meeting buyer and
seller goals. These should be:
• i. explicit
• ii. commonly agreed
• iii. unequivocal
• 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.
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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.
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Other variables missed in the research
• Simple (one-step) / complex sales
(multiple-steps)
• Length of sales cycle – lead times versus
pressures to close; a decision now or
later and what happens in the intervals
between
• Perceived value – articulated value, the
ability to articulate explicit value and
match explicit needs
• Relationships – ongoing, referrals etc.
• Customer sophistication
• The pre-sales tendering process –
preventative maintenance to mining
industry, tendering process
• Needs analysis/feasibility – needs can
take longer to ascertain than expected
• Other non-sales contact variables – for
example, recent economic downturn, not
knowing the administration cycle etc.
• The role that high finance plays in the
decision i.e., loans, leases.
• The role after-sales warranties play.
• Strong’s research of what occurs during a
sale and not what precedes or follows it.
One can argue that Strong has simply catalogued
the steps that are observed in successful sales
that closed, rather than steps that guarantee a
sale WILL close. Strong published his findings in
respected journals and in how-to-sell books.
The Psychology of Selling Life Insurance (1927) is
interesting reading, however it is claustrophobic
in its prescription of how to build conviction and
has all the hallmarks of what we would now say is
high pressure selling. Some of the techniques
almost feel like the customer was being corralled
into a sale.
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
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• 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.
©"2010&2013"Andrew"Priestley"|""www.thesalesprofile.com"""www.andrewpriestley.com"""" 11"
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.
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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?