In this podcast, I'm going to tell you about How to see the competitive game of sales in slow motion? If you want the great game of sales to move slower, allowing you to anticipate problems, challenges, and obstacles, and overcome them, you have to acquire a deeper knowledge of your craft, and education that provides you with an advantage. You Can’t Learn to Sell from Reading a Book You cannot learn to sell by reading a book. You can’t learn to sell by reading many books on sales. You can, however, learn to sell a lot better by reading books. But not only from reading books, but also from training, development, and coaching. When Neil Rackham wrote SPIN Selling in 1988, salespeople were taught to ask two kinds of questions, open-ended questions that required their prospects to provide information, and closed-ended questions that required a yes or no answer. The close-ended questions being used to teach salespeople to tie-down their prospects and close them. Rackham’s work provided a framework that included situational questions, problem questions, implication questions, and need-payoff questions. At that time, salespeople asked mostly situational and problem questions. No one had described the value of implication questions, or uncovering the motivation for change or the consequences of doing nothing. Imagine two salespeople competing for the same client. One asks questions to understand the situation and the problem the client is experiencing, while the other asks questions about the implication of their issues and the consequences of maintaining the status quo. I would argue the game is slower for the second salesperson. In 1970, Mack Hanan wrote a book titled Consultative Selling. There may not be a book that was so far ahead of the curve as it pertains to selling effectively. Hanan’s primary framework in the book is something he called a “PIP,” an acronym for a Profit Improvement Plan. The general concept was to show your client how what you were selling them would contribute to higher profits. Maybe because every new salesperson’s knowledge base starts at zero, much of what Hanan taught is unknown to most salespeople. The game moves very fast for those who believe they lose deals on price, and most salespeople still struggle to justify the more significant investment they need their clients to make to produce better results. The game moves much slower when you know how to position your higher price and relate it to lower costs, i.e., higher profitability. Without the conceptual frameworks, you can’t make sense of what you are seeing. You can’t learn to sell by reading a book on sales, but you sure as hell can learn to sell better. Instagram - @Boringcuriosity Twitter - @Boringcuriosity Powered by Unveil India