Stephen M. Haines - Tips for sales professionals

While counseling Sales Pros who have been slumping, the conversation often moves between technique and strategy.  Too many I have met focus completely on technique and ignore strategy altogether.  Oddly, they often also lack on technique!  Technique is usually focused on how you handle the interactions with a client.  How you present, how you handle concerns, and how you close.  Strategy typically is how you plan or prepare for interactions, whether for an individual client, or for your month or year in general.  Today's post is both technique and strategy.  As a strategy, I feel it is wise to always learn what you can from the client.  The customer has some pain, some problem that needs to be solved, and they have chosen to discuss it with you, the sales pro.  I have a very funny family physician with a heavy Russian accent that, whether I go in for routine checkup or a cold, enters the examination room with a so...

courtesy of jscreationzs Take yourself to the simplest of all transactions.  You've undoubtedly been through a drive through.  Countless, I'm sure.  How many of those transactions can you remember?  Seriously, of ALL time, how many can you remember?  Probably, the best and the very worst. Well, I had a memorable one this week.  I just wanted coffee and a yogurt parfait.  Nothing complicated, as Bon Qui Qui would shout "I gotta complicated order!".   Just a coffee and yogurt.  I sat staring at the callbox for a good three minutes, feeling myself aging.  I glared at the box, thinking that somehow that might get translated to the disinterested person on the other end.  Finally my order was taken, and I progressed, irritated, through the line.  I get to the window to find a very entertaining lady talking to herself and shaking her head.  She occassionally would look at me, inviting me to join the conversation, but I...