talking points
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3 Tweaks to Your Sales Approach Are Steps Toward Sales Greatness
- March 19, 2018
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Consider how frustrating it is to approach a traffic circle, or as we call them in Massachusetts, a rotary, during rush hour. You very slowly make your way towards the circle in a long line of traffic, attempt to merge into a congested circle, travel around to the other side of the circle, and finally exit the other end. Being a bit impatient, I’m usually screaming to myself, “Come on – don’t stop! – let’s get moving – let’s go!”
Hold that thought.
I believe that role-playing is the single most important thing I can do with salespeople to help them to become great. There are three kinds of role-plays:
I play the salesperson’s part and the salesperson plays the prospect. This is my preferred method as it demonstrates exactly what the conversation should sound like.
I play the prospect and the salesperson plays the salesperson. This approach works best when conducting pre-call strategy and usually serves to show me how ill-equipped the salesperson is to have the desired conversation.
The salesperson plays the salesperson and another salesperson plays the prospect. This type of role-play occurs later in training when the salesperson has the foundational skills to execute the sales process correctly and to play the sales part with some confidence.When I finally reach scenario 3 with salespeople playing their own part, it seems a lot like approaching the traffic circle. Let me explain.
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5 Keys to Get Prospects to Trust You and Then Buy From You
- November 27, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
For most of 2017 those of us in the US have been inundated with political news. That means lots of talking points (or spin) and of course talking points and selling go hand and hand, right?
Maybe.
While catching up with the latest news during the Thanksgiving break, I heard talking points from both sides of the political spectrum. I was very disturbed with the lack of facts in those talking points. First we’ll discuss the lack of facts and then we’ll discuss how to make sure your talking points hit home with your prospects.
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Why Do Salespeople Use Facts and Logic to Combat Objections?
- October 17, 2017
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
The easy answer to the title question is that they have been trained to do that since they first arrived at sales kindergarten. Whether talking points, bullet points, inarguable facts, competitive differences, ROI, value proposition, brand promise or cost of ownership, these words and phrases have been reinforced since day 1.
The problem is that while salespeople confidently spout off these return volleys, the only thing accomplished is to make it more difficult to sell anything. When a prospect states an objection their resistance goes up. When a salesperson attempts to counter the objection with logic or facts, the prospect hears the hard sell and resistance is raised some more.
Logic does not overcome objections. So what does?