Selling Isn't About the Salesperson

Years ago, when I was a young salesperson just starting out, I was fortunate enough to get sent to quite a bit of sales training.

All of the training programs seemed to center around the "Three Big Steps to Selling."

1) Prospecting
2) Presenting
3) Closing

In the presentation step, I was encouraged to gush lovingly about the features and benefits of my products and services.

I was working for a company with a strong brand that was assumed to be important.

I was taught to pitch at prospects convincingly and relentlessly.

Closing, I was taught, was something I should always be doing and that meant dealing with resistance and gaining commitment by saying something along the lines of, "Press firmly, you are making three copies."

But as I learned to sell in the real world and started to listen to my prospects.

I realized there was a big problem with what I was doing: my process was very much about me.

And my prospects were clear in their response: "Me, me, me is dull, dull, dull."

After becoming part of the Sandler Training System, I learned that what I was doing was wrong.

It was pretty simple: to be really successful, I needed to make every sales call about the prospect, not the product.

Salespeople who use the product-pitching approach will get lucky from time to time.

They will sell something simply because they bump into someone who just happens to need what they are selling.

But this approach is not very dependable, not very repeatable and not very much fun to suffer through.

Selling by accident is a tough way to make a living.

Selling with Sandler has made selling easier, more enjoyable, and most importantly, more profitable for me and for my clients