Sales Performance – Salespeople Sell the Way they Buy

I was in Chicago last night, speaking to the local EO chapter.  Many of the wonderful people in the audience had already read my book, Baseline Selling, and were unabashed fans. The EO chair, Russ Rosenweig, had already seen his company’s revenue increase by 20-30% as a result of the book.  But there was one guy in the room, a rare heckler, who just didn’t buy it.

I was talking about the Rule of Ratios, demonstrating how to quantify a problem, and turning it into a compelling reason to buy.  He believed, so strongly, that this was a transparent exercise that every prospect would recognize as as a means to justifying a higher price.  He became so emotionally involved that he actually called me a “dumb-ass”, right there in front of everyone.  He believed that quantifying was a waste of time because prospects would only make their purchase based on who had the lowest price.

Why did he believe that?  Because that’s how he buys.  And like so many salespeople, he mistakenly believes that all of his prospects buy the way he buys.  It reminded me of the Death of Selling posting that we had going on all summer.

So my heckler has a Non-Supportive Buy Cycle, becomes Emotionaly Involved, is Uncomfortable Talking about Money, and a Self-Limiting Record Collection.  The good news is that he didn’t seem to have any Need for Approval.

The funniest thing is that he came up to me at the break – not to apologize – but to further support his claims.  Then he said that he uses the Objective Management Group Assessments to hire salespeople and they’re extremely accurate and very helpful.  Too bad he can’t recognize the same weaknesses that cause us not to recommend people for his sales force in himself.

© Copyright 2006 Objective Management Group, Inc.