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Warren Wechsler's
Top Story

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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.

We all wonder why we go to school and what we would do if we were in sales school. If I were running a sales school - and I run many for many of my clients all over the country, I teach a sales process. Sales school, is a place where we learn a process that is doable, actionable, repeatable.

There are so many myths about selling. My job, my mission, is that I'm dedicated to making sure that those myths are a shattered and those stereotypes are broken or turned upside down. One of the myths about selling is "Selling! Who needs a process? I'll just wing it. I'll just shoot from the hip. I'll just go by the seat of my pants. I'll just say whatever comes into my mind. I'll just go with the flow. I'll just create it on the spot."

How many times have you heard that type of language when you hear what salespeople do? Well, it's wrong. Great salespeople do not shoot from the hip. They don't wing it. They don't say whatever comes into their mind. Great salespeople can be light on their feet and flexible. That's a great attribute to have. Generally speaking though, in most cases, the greatest salespeople have a sales process that they follow.

When I say sales process what I'm talking about is something that is definable, actionable, measurable, and repeatable. There are so many sales processes. One time I was speaking in Jacksonville, Florida. A man in the back of the room raised his hand when I was talking about how I was trained which is the go-get-'em model, which means no training at all. He raised his hand and said, "I have a sales process. It's really simple, Warren. It goes like this. Find a need. That's my first step. I go out there and I find people who have needs. And my second step is fill that need." Everybody in the audience kind of chuckled, but I thought it was a great statement. I found out later that this guy was the top salesperson in his company. He has a definable, measurable, repeatable process. Find a need. Fulfill the need. It's pretty simple.

The process I created is called The Six Steps to Excellence in Selling. The Six Steps to Excellence in Selling. Now you might ask, "You just talked about a four-step model, Counselor Selling, and two-step model, the guy in Jacksonville, a five-step model, the Dale Carnegie program. What in the world is the six-step model all about?"

When I was a new sales manager, I found that while I had taught myself the profession of selling and had become pretty good at it, I needed a way to create a process that was trackable and measurable and repeatable that I could utilize with my salespeople in the field once I became a regional manager. What I found is that I was looking for and was a pretty strong advocate of activity. I've talked about this on the show before. Activity leads to productivity. If you want to have a great football season, you have to learn how to block, tackle, punt, kick, pass, catch. It's all the activities, and when you put that all together then you have a successful outcome, what I would call productivity. Activity leads to productivity. Activity is measurable; productivity is a lagging indicator. Productivity is the outcome; activity is the action. Well, my process is all about action. And here comes sales school. That's why this is this week's top story. So everybody, get out your pencils and paper, and I'll be the teacher and you be the students.

The first step in the Six Steps to Excellence in Selling model is called Find the Prospect. What we mean by this is we have to establish whom it is we're going to make our approaches to. There are many different types of prospects that we could have. Your best prospect is your current client, people who are already buying from you. That way, when you contact them on the phone, you can simply ask them three quick questions. "What can I be doing for you now?" So you make sure you get all the current business. "What else can I be doing for you?" So you look for additional business. And, "Here's a new idea." So you're looking for brand new ideas that you can offer to your current customers. Your current customers are your best prospects.

Just this morning I was eating breakfast with a group of people that I get together with every other week. We talk about things we're doing in our businesses. One of the guys has a thriving business. His business was so good that he didn't have to do much except answer the phone and say, "Yes, yes, yes." Well, he found out that his phone wasn't ringing as much, and a couple of large projects came to an end. He found out that he had to pick up the phone and make a lot of phone calls. So I told him, "Just contact your clients. Contact one client a day. They're your best prospects." That's what he did, and business is good. Then you've got referrals. Those are your second best prospects. Then you've got targeted non-clients, targeted prospects. Those are three of the best prospects you could have: current clients, referrals, and targeted prospects. So the first step is called Find the Prospect.

In my model, which is a new-business, outbound, proactive model, the second step is called Find the Decision-Maker. In business-to-business sales we have to be very focused on finding the person or the group of people who ultimately can say yes when we ask them for the business. What we're looking for are people who have three characteristics. They have the need for what we're offering. You never know. Sometimes you run into a prospect who really doesn't have a need for what you're selling, and that's OK. You just fire that prospect and move onto a new one. So they have to have the need. They have to have the authority to say yes. That simply means that if you ask the question, "Can we do business? Would you like to go to the next step? Would you like to take delivery on Tuesday?" that they have the authority to say yes. The third attribute of a decision-maker is they have the money. I mean that in two senses. If you have a $10,000 product and people have $10 to spend on it, you don't have a prospect. They're not a qualified decision-maker. So that means that you have to make sure in a macro sense that people understand how much your product costs, what the investment is. The second aspect of money is if you're not the low-cost provider, and you're dealing with a market that wants to buy commodity-type products, then you're not going to be able to contact the right person ever because they buy based on price and you sell based on value. So in the micro sense, you have to make sure the person or the group of people you're working with understands the value and that they're willing to part with the appropriate amount of money to spend on your product or service.

Step One and Step Two are almost like the detective steps. You're identifying who are the people or companies you're going to call on and whom you should be talking to within that company.

The third step in my model, in Sales School 101, is called Arrange an Appointment. What that simply means is that it's up to us to break through what I call reflex resistance. That's when people say, "I'm not interested. I already buy from so-and-so. Send me something in the mail. I'm busy. I'm just going on vacation. I just got back from vacation. I'm just going to a meeting." All these types of things that people say when we approach them for an appointment are not because they don't want us or our product or service. It's a knee-jerk reflex reaction to all the calls that have come before yours. The third step, Arrange an Appointment, is where most salespeople actually begin to fail because they'll make ten or fifteen approaches to get appointments, and people say, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no." And pretty soon the salesperson loses momentum, loses ambition, loses belief, and decides he will go somewhere else or hang out at the movie theatre, or work for a different company. Step Three, Arrange an Appointment is broken into four distinct other actions that I'll touch on very briefly here: introduce yourself, make an initial benefit statement, prepare for and anticipate reflex resistance, and get the firm appointment. That's Step Three, Arrange an Appointment.

The fourth step is the easiest to say and the hardest to practice. The fourth step is called Ask Questions and Listen. Ask Questions and Listen. What most salespeople do is that when they go on an appointment they're so excited that someone's actually willing to sit down and talk to them, either phone-to-phone or face-to-face, that instead of doing a needs analysis, or what I previously under different models called discovery, people start talking all about themselves. "Let me tell you about me. Let me tell you about my company. Let me tell you about my products. Let me tell you about my service. Let me tell you about my current customers. Let me tell you about situations similar to yours."

This is another myth about sales. You've heard, "Oh that Sally is going to be a great salesperson because she's such a great talker." Well, the fact is the reason that Sally is successful is because she understands Step Four, Asking Questions and Listening. There is a tremendous amount of magic when you start asking people, "Tell me about your current situation. What do you like best about those vendors? How long have you been working with them? What are some areas of need that they haven't identified? If you were ever to make a change and look at a new product or a new service or a new idea, what would that company have to provide for you? What would you be looking for?" Once you start asking a whole series of penetrating, open-ended questions, you will be amazed at how much rapport is built up with your potential customers, and you'll also be amazed at how much they want to do business with you. What they're thinking is, "You know what? Warren's not trying to sell me anything. He seems to be most interested in my needs." Step Four is Ask Questions and Listen.

Step Five is called Present Your Solution. It's based on what you found out during Step Four. In Step Five, Present Your Solution, the focus is on benefits. Benefits simply mean why people buy, why it's important to them, and what it means to them. So many of us salespeople focus on what I call feature. Feature might be that the book is blue and yellow. Well, who cares? Unless you have a passion about blue and yellow, you don't care that the book is blue and yellow. You want to know what's in the book. In this book are ideas on how you can make more money, how you can be happier, how you can reduce stress in your life. Now you want to look at that book because those are things that might be important to you. The fifth step is the time when it's up to the salesperson to talk a lot. The spotlight is on. It's appropriate to be eloquent and to talk more than you listen during this step, Step Five.

OK, the first five steps set you up for the sixth step. I should mention here that every step in the model that I'm describing to you builds on the one underneath it. You don't have an appointment if you don't have a decision-maker. You don't have a decision-maker if you don't have a good prospect. If you don't have a good prospect you don't even go to Step Two. If you can't get through to the decision-maker you never get to Step Three. If you don't get to Step Three you never get to Step Four. You don't present the solution until you've asked enough questions.

Finally during your sales process you get through your presentation, and now, the magic sixth step - it's really not magic. In my live seminars I always say, "OK, everybody, what's the sixth step?" Everybody says, "Close, close, close the sale. Get the business." And they're all wrong. And you would be wrong if you said that today, and I'd be wrong if I said that. Why? Because you can't close a sale. You can ask for the order or ask for a commitment. And that's what the sixth step is. It's called Ask for a Commitment. Once we recognize that we can't close a sale it takes all the pressure off of us. All we need to do is ask obligating questions, which is the main theme in that sixth step, Ask for a Commitment. It simply means you ask in your own mind, "What's next? Where do we go from here?" As soon as you know the answer to that question, you simply ask it of the person with whom you're meeting. "What else do we need to know? When can I come back? Is there anything else you need to consider? Why would you not want to do business today? Is there any reason why we can't do business today? Would you like to take two or three? Can I stop back on Wednesday and make the delivery? Let's get the paperwork started. What do you think?" These are all examples of obligating questions based on the whole concept of "what's next?"

If I were your teacher I would have told you, "OK, students, that's what we're going to focus on this term or this semester. We're going to focus on those six steps, and altogether those six steps equal what I call sales process. Later on in the year we're going to cover two very important topics. One is called Sales Planning, which means how to get where you're going and why. And the other concept is called Sales Practice which is all about organizing yourself to make sure you take advantage of every opportunity and keep track of all the information that comes to you as a sales professional. These three concepts together, class, Sales Process, Sales Planning, and Sales Practice, those three concepts make up the Total Selling model. And that's what selling is all about, having a Total Selling orientation, having a Total Selling model. And that's what we're going to do this year in your sales school.

You've been a very good class today. It's a beautiful day. It's time for recess. Class dismissed.

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