Has your sales training gone from cutting edge to old school?
Has your sales training gone from cutting edge to old school
?
I usually don't write about sales, but selling skills and customer service skills have always been closely related. This was a topic I though worth discussion:
If you're a sales trainer, I have a question for you. Has your new way' of selling become old school' without you noticing?
I heard a sales trainer last week referring to old school' sales people and old school' selling skills. He then went on to passionately describe the better new way' of selling. What I found interesting was that this new way' of selling that he was so passionate about is at least ten years old now. This got me to thinking. Is it possible that the new way' of selling is becoming a little dated? Is it possible that the selling best practices' that most of us embrace aren't actually the best any more?
Permit me a brief history lesson of selling over the last 50 years.
Selling in the 60's and 70's
Back in the 60's and early 70's there wasn't a lot of sophistication or subtlety to selling. "Close, close, close" was the mantra. And if that didn't work, close again. Sales trainers had a field day coming up with clever and inventive ways of closing the sale. There were the back-door close, the million-dollar close, the feel-felt & found close, the puppy-dog close and a million others.
Selling in the 70's and 80's
In the mid 70's through the eighties, selling became a little more process oriented. Acronyms like "FAB" (Features, Advantages, Benefits) filled sales training rooms as trainers brought the world of selling into a more customer-focused activity.
Selling in the 90's
In the 1990's, things began to change yet again. This whole, hey, let's focus on what the customer needs' really seemed to be working. So we began bringing it to a whole new level. Instead of just trying to sell something to somebody, let's learn about them and their needs instead, we figured. Question-based selling, probing, qualifying, discovery all became the new approach.
Selling in the new millennium
The change continued into the new millennium, when we began to adopt a more sophisticated version or the seek first to understand, then be understood model.' This consistently effective sales model, highlighted in Kelley Robertson's iconic 2004 sales book "Stop, Ask & Listen" is still the strategy you are most likely to see in today's classrooms.
And now?
The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that we're due for someone to once again reinvent the sales process. People, after all, have experienced unprecedented social change over the last decade. People look at the world differently. People consume differently. People communicate differently. Does it not make sense that we should begin selling differently?
A challenge and a question
I don't have the answer, but I do have a question and a challenge to all the sales trainers out there. The question is: What is next? What is a better way to approach sales than the decade-old new way' of selling? The challenge is for you to step out of your current paradigm and not just come up with a twist on the new way' of selling.
I have a few thoughts rattling around in my head concepts that firmly move the asking questions' paradigm to a supporting role, and focus instead on the salesperson becoming a "trusted advisor," and "trusted information source."Got any betterideas?
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