BASELINE SELLING WEEKLY TIPS

How to Sell More Effectively

Every salesperson wants to be more effective - unless of course they're looking for early retirement. A salesperson made a call on me that serves as a good example of what most salespeople could do better.

He was actually selling a consultative selling simulator, so you'd think he'd be quite good at this. He did ask plenty of questions, but they were more like the game of 50 questions - one after another - and didn't generate conversation. Your questions should be used to stimulate conversation. He knew all about finding problems because he told us that was an important part of the sales simulator. He never quite got there and as a result, was not able to quantify the problem. Finally, when he asked about budget he was told there wasn't one. In our case that was a good thing - we could spend whatever the appropriate solution required. But he let it go and assumed the budget response meant no money.

His final mistake came when the call became challenging. I questioned his ability to create a meaningful simulation because he wasn't executing his version of consultative selling. He bailed out.

These four mistakes are very common:

Failure to identify the problem they will spend money on;
Failure to quantify the problem;
Failure to quantify the amount of money they can spend;
Failure to hang in when the going gets tough.

How well do you perform in these four areas? Baseline Selling - How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball, can help you master these four common problems. Read the chapters on getting to 2nd Base and Getting to 3rd Base for detailed explanations and examples of how to do this right and without difficulty.