Introduction
Selling remains one of the highest-paid, most critical professions of free enterprise economies. It is one of the jobs that rewards performance (or lack of it)
relatively proportionate to results produced. Selling is the catalyst that makes
things happen, putting millions of people to work manufacturing products,
filling orders, and meeting people’s needs around the world.
The old business cliché is true: “Nothing happens until somebody sells something.” For 80 years, in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, an economic
experiment was tried without salespeople. It was called communism.
But if selling is so important, why are stereotypes of salespeople so consistently
negative? Two reasons:
• Most people—including customers and salespeople—don’t really
understand the role, skills, and functions of salespeople.
• There are a lot of bad salespeople.
To achieve success, salespeople must overcome negative images. They must
believe, as I do, that selling is a profession. Properly executed, the skills of
professional salespeople are important keys to spreading ideas, educating people, facilitating informed decision-making processes, providing competition,
implementing change, handling the commercial details of transactions, and
ensuring customer and user satisfaction.
This book is focused on business-to-business selling in the wholesale distribution industry. It will
• Define the functions wholesale distribution salespeople perform for
customers
• Describe the environment in which distribution salespeople operate
• Introduce a sales model for performing effectively in this environment
• Give specific skills, techniques, and tools to excel
• Provide a memory tool (a diagram) as a daily reminder.
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Introduction
“He’s a Born Salesperson”
The phrase “he’s a born salesperson” is often used to describe a person who
seems skilled at persuading others to do something, believe something, or buy
something. It literally says salesmanship is a trait a person is born with, rather
than a professional skill that can—and must—be learned.
Other theories about sales include:
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“Sales is an art, not a science.”
“You’re either born with sales skills or you aren’t.”
“Anyone can sell if you just follow the system.”
“Sales is a science based on human psychology.”
“I sell my own way—I don’t rely on any of those sales gimmicks.”
“Every sales situation is different. I just go with my instincts.”
“All it takes to succeed in sales is perseverance, hard work, and the
ability to rebound from rejection.”
These statements seem to imply one of two things: either that selling can’t be
learned because it’s something you’re born with or that it’s all just a bunch of
systematized gimmicks—learn them and you can do it.
So, is selling a science? Art? Natural skill? Gimmick? System? Individual
attribute?
Selling is a profession. Like other professions, there is a body of knowledge that
forms the structure of techniques and skills that are most effective. These are
practiced in customized ways by individuals with differing levels of effectiveness, based on their knowledge, the unique talents they bring to the profession, their circumstances, and their work ethic. This book respects selling as a
profession and salespeople as professionals.
Sales Model
One method of providing structure to help sales professionals develop their
sales skills and techniques in an organized manner is to consistently work with
a sales model. Sales models include:
• An understanding of the characteristics of a specific sales situation (in
this case, business-to-business sales in wholesale distribution)
• A sales philosophy (examples include: “Nobody beats our price”…
“Our products are the best; they sell themselves”… “We focus on the
customer”… “We give the customers the information, and they sell
themselves”)
• A consistent sales approach
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Introduction
• Sales language
• A memory tool
• Sales techniques and tools effective in the specific sales environment.
The Objective-Based Selling™ Sales Model
Objective-Based Selling is a model to help wholesale distribution sales professionals identify, learn, and practice key skills and techniques for their unique
business-to-business sales environment, and to provide an overall framework
(game plan) in which to employ these skills and techniques.
Objective-Based Selling emphasizes three key skills and techniques:
1. Asking open-ended questions and listening carefully to the customer’s
response
2. Building appropriate personal, professional relationships with customer
decision influencers
3. Writing and presenting effective sales proposals—proposals that present price in the context of an entire proposal, not just as a number;
documents that sell when the salesperson can’t be there.
Objective-Based Selling also provides a fourth key:
4. A memory tool, or sales model diagram, to remind sales professionals
of the sales process. The diagram facilitates a consistent sales approach,
building toward a profitable sale. It’s a framework wholesale distribution salespeople can build on with their unique talents, skills, personality, and work ethic. It’s a playbook.
Big Things and Little Things
Effective sales models help salespeople in little things as well as big things.
Objective-Based Selling will guide wholesale distribution salespeople in little
things that create a more professional approach and a more positive sales environment. Little things include using positive sales language; not asking a customer contact his title (it can be demeaning, it’s easy to get other ways, and
what you really want to know is his area of responsibility, not always revealed
by title); and doing simple things to help build more productive personal,
professional relationships (such as writing personal thank-you notes). While
explaining these little things, Objective-Based Selling’s major contribution to
wholesale distribution salespeople’s effectiveness is the big picture look at the
sales process in this industry, using the four key elements described above.
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Introduction
About Terminology in this Book
Both men and women excel as wholesale distribution salespeople. This book
will use the gender-neutral words salesperson and salespeople instead of the more
traditional salesman and salesmen. The male pronouns he, his, and him will be
used, to avoid the awkward he/she, his/her, and him/her.
This book refers often to business-to-business selling. This is meant to also
include selling to governmental and other organizations that may not technically be businesses, but which act like businesses in the acquisition of products
and services from wholesaler-distributors.
The word project is often used in this book to describe a selling (buying, purchasing) situation. This is done intentionally, for two reasons:
• Most significant transactions in the wholesale distribution industry
occur either through formal budgeting and purchasing processes or
contract negotiation. Due to their importance to the customer organization, they often refer to these decision-making and implementation
processes as projects.
• Use of the word project by wholesale distribution salespeople elevates
the process in the customer’s mind and frame of reference. This helps
these projects compete for funds within the customers’ organizations—
and generally raises the professionalism of the process, as well as the
image of the salesperson. This all works to the advantage of the customer and to the salesperson using the techniques of Objective-Based
Selling.
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