Exceptional Selling A FINAL WORD ON THE SEQUENCE OF ...

1 Exceptional SellingExceptional Selling 2010 SUCCESS Media. All rights reserved. Materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without prior written permission. Published by SUCCESS Media, 200 Swisher Rd., Lake Dallas, TX 75065, USA. Summarized by permission of the publisher, Jossey-Bass, a Wiley Imprint, 989 Market St., San Francisco, CA 94103. Exceptional Selling by Jeff Thull. 2006 by Jeff Thull. Recommended ReadingIf you enjoyed this summary of Exceptional Selling , we encourage you to visit your favorite bookseller to purchase a copy for your personal success library.

2 You may also want to check out:Little Red Book of Selling : Principles of Sales Greatness by Jeffrey Gitomer Selling 101: What Every Successful Sales Professional Needs to Know by Zig Ziglar Secrets of Question Based Selling : How the Most Powerful Tool in Business Can Double Your Sales Results by Thomas Freeseby Je Thull John Wiley & Sons Inc. 2006, Je Thull ISBN: 9780470037287 230 pages$ SUCCESS BOOK SUCCESS BOOK SUMMARIESPage 1 Page 6 Page SUCCESS BOOK SUMMARIESA FINAL WORD ON THE SEQUENCE OF EXECUTIVE CONVERSATIONS Most often, executives simultaneously play two roles in high-stakes sales.

3 First, they act as cast members, with their own job responsibilities and personal perspective. That is, we ask them to provide direct input into the nuts and bolts of the decision and work with them to develop the information we need in the diagnosis of the problem and the design of the solution. At the same time, however, executives act as sponsors. In this role, they are only indirectly involved in the mechanics of the sale. When we work with sponsoring executives, our role in the sale changes. This new role can be challenging for salespeople to manage and it bears additional examination.

4 When executives act as sponsors, their direct participation is required only at key milestones, such as the sponsorship decision, the sanity checks that communicate ndings and value reportage. But in between, they are positioned outside the action. You aren t Selling to them at all. In fact, you are more like one of the executive s sta members than a salesperson. CLOSE With these thoughts rmly in mind, you will be best able to understand what questions to ask, diagnose the client s problem, help the client determine the absence of the value your company o ers, help the client craft a solution, and establish not only a sale but a relationship that continues to be win-win for you, your company and the the Right QuestionsWHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO SELL ANYTHINGQUICK OVERVIEW Have you ever said to a customer, You ve probably never thought of this.

5 Or We save companies like yours millions of dollars in Both of these statements could very well be true, but they are also received as thinly disguised insults. Statements like these imply the customer doesn t think and wastes millions of dollars. While you believe you are enlightening your customers, they may be hearing a criticism. When customers and prospects hear these insults, they lean back, cross their arms and shut down. The salesperson can keep talking, but the conversation is over. Sales conversations are rife with traps like these.

6 Exceptional Selling exposes these mistakes and o ers logical and proven alternatives that enhance the clarity, relevancy, credibility and trust salespeople endeavor to create in conversations with customers. In Exceptional Selling , author Je Thull explains that the core of best Selling practices includes listening to situations, diagnosing problems and helping the client craft a solution. Thull also identi es three root causes of failure that can prevent us from succeeding: confrontation, comprehension and compliance.

7 With this information, salespeople are equipped to move the decision maker from prospect to satis ed client. APPLY AND ACHIEVE One aw in conventional sales training is the concept of the salesperson as persuader. The problem is that we rarely stop to think about how customers perceive the tactics of persuasion that salespeople are taught and encouraged to use. They are going to see you as the lecturing professor. Consider this from the customer s perspective: If someone is trying to push you into taking a certain course of action, even when you have misgivings about it, or if he is implying that he knows better than you, that he is smart and you are not, or that you just don t get it, how would you react?

8 When someone pressures you to take a certain course, it s only natural to question his motives. Why is he pushing me so hard? Whose interests is he actually looking out for? Justi ed or not, the answers to these questions seem obvious to customers, and that is why this type of behavior doesn t build credibility or engender trust. Overzealous CLOSING IS NOT THE END OF THE SALES PROCESS This Is Where the Proposal Comes In Another fundamental f law in conventional Selling is that the post-sale process tends to be treated as anticlimactic and is often addressed in a haphazard, piecemeal fashion.

9 This represents the abandonment of your most valuable source of new business. If a proposal shouldn t be a document of consideration, what should it be? This may sound anticlimactic, but it should be a document of confirmation. The purpose of a proposal is to document the series of decisions that have already been made. It should confirm everything we ve done with the customer to this point. The proposal should reprise all of the elements of the incentive to change and the confidence to invest that we ve already established with the customer.

10 It connects all of the elements of value in a single, formal document. Show Me the Money One of the most misguided instructions salespeople receive is Never give the customer the price before you ve completed your pitch. The idea behind this is that customers will walk away if they hear your price before they hear everything they are going to get for their money. I don t agree. You should never be afraid or unwilling to tell a customer your price, or at least provide as honest an estimate as you can at the moment the question is asked.