Professional Selling Skills

Welcome to the first of what I hope will be many postings to assist our students in their successful use of the PSS skills that you have begun to put into practice having attended our 3 day sales development program.

In each module it is my desire to share some insights to remind and to stimulate your application of the knowledge that you obtained in the 3 days that we spent together.

In the early 1990s Fortune magazine decided to do an article on selling. The question they set out to answer was:

Why were some people so good at selling while others so blatantly bad?

To find out the answer the writers interviewed 24 top sales performers across a broad spectrum of fields. Among those who were interviewed were financial advisors, insurance producers, executive recruiters and a wide variety of consultants and high-value services providers. Here is what they learned.

• The most successful sales people sell without it ever being apparent that they are in fact, selling.
• There was nothing obvious or obnoxious about their presentation.
• No Trial Close, Ben Franklin close or Take Away closes.
• They sold, but they sold invisibly.
• Moreover the Fortune article concluded that the more you are marketing and selling high-value services the more important it is to be able to sell invisibly.

So what exactly does this mean? How did the top performers go about building trust and credibility? How did they overcome often deep-seated skepticism? How did they persuade others to their point of view?

The one thing in common was, they all told stories. Lots of stories. Stories that demonstrated how others had successfully achieved results by using their services. Stories that preemptively addressed objections or concerns. Stories that made it easy for others to refer them to their friends and colleagues. Stories that built credibility and reduced skepticism.

So what is your marketing story?