How Top Salespeople Maintain Their Dignity and Self-Respect

Jacques Werth
High Probability Selling
Prospects and customers, no matter their titles or status, are people like you and me.  We all have a very strong preference for dealing with people that we respect. 
The degree in which a prospect feels respect for the salesperson is extremely important.  It is almost as important as their trust in the salesperson.  We don’t really know whether it is a deliberate behavior of top salespeople to maintain their dignity and self-respect, or whether it is a character trait.  Either way, it is very important to adopt that attitude and learn that attitude and behavior if you want to become a top producer. (…)

Are You New to NLP?

 
Jacques Werth
High Probability Selling
A software salesperson related the following story about one of his recent sales appointments. 
“I went into a meeting with a prospect in his office, and our conversation started with him asking, ‘Tell me again what your software does.”

As he spoke I noticed the prospect, whose elbows had been on the arms of his chair, was moving his hands down alongside the arms of his chair. (…)

I Just Learned a New Business Principle

 
By Paul Bunn
High Probability Selling
During lunch today, I went to my optometrist in an attempt to get my classes repaired.  It was a minor repair.  I could have done the work once I purchased the parts.  The only problem was that my optometrist’s business is set up to facilitate the purchase of new glasses. 
Customers that want repairs or parts, no matter how minor, are directed to the department that sells frames and lenses.  I waited for about 30 minutes, anxiously waiting for someone to assist me.  Nothing happened. 

I don’t necessarily blame the salespeople.  After all, why handle a minor repair job when a much more immediately lucrative set of glasses might be sold?  And they were just following the owners’ business model.  And I clearly didn’t fit their model. 
And that model has a flaw.  The awareness of what customers, in my case existing long-term customers, want…other than selling a new pair of glasses to us every year or so…was somehow overlooked. (…)

Are You Missing Your Best Niche Market?

By Jacques Werth
High Probability Selling
Every salesperson has a great niche market that 99 percent aren’t even aware of.  The concept of a niche market is not new.  The meaning of the term is as varied as the number of sales, marketing and business people trying to identify, define or pursue a niche.  If you find the right niche, your sales volume will skyrocket. (…)

How Top Producers Eliminate Objections

By Jacques Werth
High Probability Selling
Many salespeople try to rationalize that objections are good because they indicate the prospect's level of interest and pinpoint the keys to making the sale. (…)

The Right Relationships with the Right Prospects at the Right Time

 
Most salespeople practice "Consultative Selling." Using this popular sales method, they believe that their job is to meet with prospects who have an apparent need for their products and/or services. (…)

Are You Prepared to Win on the Phone?

By Paul Bunn
High Probability Selling
“The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital.”
 
Joe Paterno
A great number of salespeople pride themselves on being able to think on their feet and come up with the perfect response for whatever a prospect says.  Upon closer examination of the consistent top performers in sales, there’s more to it than just picking up the phone and having conversations, hoping they’ll lead to business or making a sale.  It takes preparation. (…)

Objection-Free Selling?

By Paul  Bunn
High Probability Selling™
 
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
-   Mark Twain
 I’ve done a bit of internet searching about objections.  In the majority of sales training websites, “overcoming objections” is listed as a critical part of any sales process.  There are a multitude of techniques and tactics offered, including memorizing the 150-plus common objections and using 135 or so phrases to overcome them. 
When you are trying to get people to do something they don't want to do (such as getting them to give you an appointment, or persuading them to buy something they don't want to buy yet) you generate sales resistance in the form of objections.  Sales resistance is the most prevalent root cause of the objections that salespeople have to continue to try to overcome. 
What if there was another way to achieve a closed sale without having to overcome objections?  What if there was a way to prevent the sales resistance that causes nearly all the objections heard by salespeople? 
Our research, compiled over 40 years of observing top salespeople in the field, has shown that they eliminate the cause of most objections… by changing the approach to selling.  Several key observations came from this research, two of which are:
Top producers approach prospecting in a very different way.  Instead of attempting to convince a prospect to make an appointment, the goal of their prospecting is to find the prospects that don’t require convincing and persuasion to make a purchase.  Contrary to popular belief, these prospects exist in every market we’ve encountered. 
Then, these top salespeople approach selling in a very different way.  On the rare occasions that an objection comes up, they acknowledge and discuss it with the prospect in a manner that we describe as “full disclosure.”  They discuss the detriments of their offering as well as the features and benefits, which prevent an objection from becoming a deal-killer. (…)

Do You Believe Your Prospects?

By Paul Bunn
High Probability Selling
 
Numerous sales trainers and coaches will tell us that to be successful in selling, we must believe in ourselves, and also believe in our product and/or services.  Self-belief and self-confidence equal more sales.  There’s just one key belief missing.   
We have been in search of a CRM customer database system and have visited several websites and other information sources looking for a suitable system.  We made some calls and received calls from a few vendors offering their solutions.  Nearly all of them went like this:
Salesperson launched into his or her pitch, trying to get me to attend a demo, busily trying to tell me what’s so great about their offering.  I clearly stated that I had no interest in a demo.  I just wanted to match up our requirements to their features as quickly as possible, then watch a demo that shows those features, and buy the system that was the best fit.  A one-size-fits-all demo of undetermined length would be a complete waste of time, for both of us. (…)

Are You Stuck with Slow Sales Growth?

By Jacques Werth
High Probability Selling

If your sales productivity is not continuously improving, then you are probably stuck.  It is likely because you are using one or more of the following sales methods and tactics:

Cold Calling          
Solution Selling
Needs Selling
Selling Benefits      
Consultative Selling
Rapport Building
Identifying Needs   
Finding Pain                   
Presenting            
Persuading            
Convincing                     
Closing Techniques
Overcoming Objections

Why would any of those methods and tactics get you stuck?  Because they are all parts of the traditional selling system that was developed over 70 years ago.  It all worked pretty well until around the mid-1980s.  Since then these have all gradually become obsolete. 
The world has changed immensely in the last 20 years:  culturally, economically, technically, educationally, and so on.  It all started with the advent of the personal computer and then the Internet.  Every other business activity (such as marketing, finance, engineering, accounting, etc.) has changed dramatically to adjust to those changes.  Yet, selling has changed very little in the last 70 years.  
If you want to get unstuck, if you are ready for dramatic sales growth, find out about the new sales process that really works now. (…)

Questions: Open-Ended or Close-Ended?

By Jacques Werth, President
High Probability® Selling

Almost all salespeople know the "right answer" to that one.  Or do they? (…)

Selling Beyond Fear

By Jacques Werth, President
High Probability® Selling

In the 17 years we've been training salespeople in High Probability Selling, we've known that what we teach scares people. (…)