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A HISTORY OF SALESWhere do your sales techniques come from?

Andrew Priestley

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Sales techniques didn’t work for me!

• Using textbook closes and people didn’t buy.

• Flushed out the objections – they wanted it, they needed it and still they didn’t buy.

• So, if I received world-class cutting edge training why weren’t people buying?

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Two incidents changed how I sold

1. A client was desperate to sell. My sales manager insisted I had to close (cheat) the deal if I wanted a result. I closed the deal, the house sold and I got paid but I felt lousy.

2. I told an agent that a client’s husband had arthritis in the hips so she needed a single level dwelling on a flat block. The agent drove her out to a two-storey home on a sloping block. She was angry. So angry.

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These incidents taught me

1. Work for my real client – not for my sales manager.

2. Spend time genuinely finding out what my customer wanted and why BEFORE a solution was pitched.

Even though I began my sales career as textbook accurate the experience was terrible

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The history of selling

• From 1890-1930 an interest in selling blossomed, coinciding with the advent of mass production and an exponentially increasing consumer market.

• That huge consumer market had the ability to spend more and more.

• Average annual income in America 1900: $4801910: $1500

Consumer Price Index and inflation Calculators

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The early foundations of selling

• John Patterson, the father of American salesmanship identified a four phase sequence:

1. Approaching a customer

2. Demonstrating

3. Objection handling

4. Closing

1887, John Patterson How I sell National cash registers

1947, Frank Bettger How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling

1982 Tom Hopkins The Art of Selling.

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The development of sales training

• Patterson identified sales skills and training to match each stage

• Most sales books follow his methodology.• Some sales books have altered the

sequence and call it non-traditional selling, e.g. David Sandler.

• Original sales research peaked in the 1920s.

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Sales theory

• The Hierarchy of Effects – Buying occurs in a predictable sequence and

success lies in understanding behaviour and sequence.

• Attention Interest Desire Action (AIDA)– Proposed by E St Elmo Lewis, 1898; a

theory of selling influenced by the Hierarchy of Effects. It suggests that if you create attention, interest, and desire, your customer will take action.

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Sales training during the 1950s-80s

• Sales training became a legitimate industry with the advent of the baby and manufacturing booms.

• With the advent of Hire Purchase and Credit Finance sales people could legally stitch up a client for thousands of pounds of debt during the 50s and 60s, causing many to lose their homes.

Who taught them to sell like that?

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The computer industry, 1983

• Xerox versus IBM, 1983 who had both dominated the photocopying industry commissioned studies into sales training.

• This led to Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling/ Huthwaite (1986), a focus on what sales people do in the process of a sale.

• He observed that the sales techniques you and I were taught as cutting edge actually reverse as the value of the sale increases.

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Dr Edward Kellogg Strong

• Strong, an applied psychologist, has heavily influenced subsequent sales theories.

• His methodology to review available sales literature: observing and analysing sales’ people, and identifying their key behaviours. – Books by E K Strong:

•The Psychology of Selling (1925) •The Psychology of Selling and Advertising

(1927) •The Psychology of Selling Life Insurance (1927) •Psychology of Business (1938).

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Strong is credited with:

• Further developing AIDA in 1925 • Closing techniques (Always Be Closing).• That sales is a numbers game• To ask open/closed questions• To develop rapport building skills• Handling objections

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What does Strong get right?

• Strong identified that: – there is a buyer focus and seller focus.  – there are implicit and explicit needs for why

people buy.– top sellers focus on indentifying a buyer’s

explicit needs; poor sellers focus on what they guess the customer wants.

– success is linked to meeting buyer and seller goals.

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So what’s wrong with Strong?

• Hierarchy of Effects theory is not yet proven.  

• No differentiation between value and cost.• Not focused on how to build real value for

services. • Didn’t qualify what a ‘high’ price was• There is NO research that supports his idea

that strong desire or conviction to purchase actually leads to a purchase.

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Factors not accounted for by Strong

• Length of sales cycle• The importance of a perceived value • Relationships – ongoing, referrals etc.• Customer sophistication• The tendering process • Needs analysis/feasibility • Other environment considerations.• The role of finance • The role of after-sales warranties

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What’s common to all sales?

• Opening – rapport building skills• Needs research – open/closed questions• Benefits confusion, based on implicit or

explicit needs• Objections – handling or prevention?• Tie downs• Closing techniques – trial closes,

assumptive closes, alternative closes, either/or closes.

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The Sales Skill Profile

• The sequence of ten sales skills:– Readiness– Knowledge– Prospecting– Rapport– Investigating, Qualifying– Presenting– Objections– Closing– Servicing– Administration

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Sales Systems

• It is best to train the sales person how their sales’ system works from both the customer and the buyer’s perspectives.

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Summary

• Books, training, research and theory. • EK Strong played a key role. • We still lack is a robust theory of selling.• Many of your ideas may not work.• There is a sequential order to sales.• Skilled people with poor attitudes can be

outsold by poorly skilled people with great attitudes.

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Conclusion

• Skills, attitudes and sequence strengths can be tested and should be tested. Sales skills should be tailored to sales systems; and the bespoke customer context for your business or industry.

• Sales techniques should be ethically applied and meet compliance with the customer.

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A HISTORY OF SALES THIS PRESENTATION IS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO USE OR SHARE IT

OUTSIDE THE RIPPLE EFFECT TRAINING PROGRAMME PLEASE SPEAK TO US FIRST.

Andrew Priestley

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