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February 3, 2005

Sales Spiral

At home this week, I got an invitation to one of Dale Carnegie's sales training courses. Tucked inside the invitation was a business card-sized primer to his Selling Success Spiral and questioning model. The little card is useful enough on its own.

Selling Success Spiral

New opportunity
Pre-approach
First communication
First interview
Opportunity analysis
Solution development
Soultion presentation
Customer evaluation
Negotiation
Buy commitment
Follow-up
Satisfied customers

The questioning model also offers tools you can use:

As-is questions help determine the current situation of a potential customer
Should be questions create an image of a possible buyer's optimal performance
Barrier questions address issues that may be keeping them from achieving their optimal performance
Payout questions help identify how a company or team will benefit from the services you offer

How does this map with your experience of the sales process and cycle?

Posted by Heath Row at February 3, 2005 2:34 PM | Category: sales + marketing | 2 Comments

2 COMMENTS

Posted by: Chris at February 3, 2005 4:09 PM

Boy does that sound a lot like Spin Selling.

S - Situation Questions
P - Problem Questions
I - Inplications
N - Needs

Than again, SPIN Selling sounds a lot like XEROX needs based selling from the 70s and 80s. There is very little "new" in selling. It's mostly consultants putting their personal spin on some pretty standard stuff.

Posted by: Scott Jones at February 9, 2005 11:03 PM

Having a well-defined sales process is one of the important components to success in the sales arena. That said, it's just one component. One thing that is clear though is that sales occur, most typically, as a result of a relationship between individuals. It is the rare instance where Company A sells something to Company B. It is usually Mary selling to Jack, for instance, based on a human relationship ... yes even in large, enterprise B2B sales. Here are a few weblogs on this very subject:

Revolutionary Marketing & Sales Strategies - http://trustedadvisor.typepad.com/revolutionary_marketing_a/

Prospect Intelligence - http://trustedadvisor.typepad.com/prospect_intelligence/