Idea of the Week - Total Selling Systems

Warren Wechsler's
Idea of the Week

The Quadrant Theory

Warren Wechsler, bestselling author and national sales and motivational speaker, provides many valuable resources free of charge to sales trainers and sales managers. Some restrictions apply to the use and distribution of this information. For more valuable materials, visit Warren's web site www.totalselling.com. All materials and content © Warren Wechsler, 2001 – All rights reserved.

I talk in my seminars about the quadrant theory of products and customers. There are two sides of the product area. There are old products, which are current, and there are new products, which are potential. And there is the same thing on the people or company side. There are old or current customers, and new or potential customers or prospects.

If you cross the lines you come up with four quadrants. The first quadrant, retention, is current product, current client, which is where we ought to spend about half our time. The second quadrant is new products, current clients. Don't be afraid to let your customers know what else you can provide. The third quadrant is offer something you're really good at to a new person, and the best way to do that is through referrals so you don't have to face that maximum rejection. And then the fourth quadrant is the thing that we all hate doing, but we have to do to season our business, to sprinkle the new ideas into our business, and that is go out and talk to somebody brand new about a product that is brand new to them, or something that is an emerging product for you. So if your company decides to expand its offerings and get into a new area, and it means you have to go talk to a new caliber of person, you're in the trailblazing quadrant.

The reason I call it the trailblazing quadrant is, if you think about what happened to the pioneers as they blazed a trail across our great country in the 1700's, what happened to a lot of those pioneers? They got slaughtered. So we have to understand as salespeople that we're going to face maximum rejection in quadrant four, but sometimes we have to spend time there in order to maintain our business or guarantee we're going to be successful in the future.

This was a partial transcript from Warren Wechsler's weekly radio show. Warren Wechsler, bestselling author and national sales and motivational speaker, provides many valuable resources free of charge to sales trainers and sales managers. Visit Warren's web site www.totalselling.com Also, listen to Warren's weekly radio broadcast Wednesday's at 4:05 - 5:00 pm Central time, on KMCD-AM 1570AM. Shows are broadcast live on the internet at http://www.warpradio.com/asx/KMCD-AM.asx