World Class Selling, 2nd edition

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I WANT TO PERSONALLY THANK the many people who have helped me and made a contribution to World Class Selling.

A special thank-you to all the clients of Max Sacks International with whom we have had the pleasure of working for the past fifty-plus years and from whom we learned so much. And to the thousands of individuals who have responded to me in writing, by phone, fax, and e-mail, thanking me for the impact the Track Selling System has made on their lives.

A special thank-you to my editor, Kathy Bradley, for her immeasurable contribution.

To the staff of Max Sacks International, including Rick Cobb, Al Kauder, Ray Felix, Ron Holm, Jason Kleid, Alex Rasmussen, and the distributors and facilitators who deliver our World Class Track Selling System workshops worldwide.

A super-special thanks to my manager of Special Projects, Jamee Smith, for her contribution in keeping me on Track.

Also, to the many people on our staff of consultants who have contributed to World Class Selling, including Gerri Knilans; Betty Platts; Bert Barer, PhD; Rose-Lise Obetz, PhD; Tim Branning; and Terry Roberts. These people have contributed their brilliance, creativity, and hard work to making World Class Selling a great success.

And last but not least, to all my friends and relatives who have supported me during the past several years as I have grown to be a better salesperson, teacher, businessperson, and above all, a more loving and caring human being.

FOREWORD

Ron Holm

Salesman

WHEN THE FIRST EDITION of Roy Chitwood’s World Class Selling was published, the U.S. economy was enjoying the post-Reagan and Clinton years of prosperity. The Iron Curtain and Berlin Wall were falling. The world was experiencing its first sea-level change since World War II.

Through the 1990s, the economy grew, in-bound sales phones rang, and salespeople became well-paid order-takers. Professional selling skills—highly prized in the 1970s and ’80s—were nice-to-know but not essential. Roy’s first edition was released into that era.

The context of release date with this second edition is a different and more compelling era. Beginning a decade ago, Y2K was followed by the economic dot.com bomb collapse. September 11 became forever etched in our memory and triggered conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan that remain unresolved as this book went to print. Corporate frauds of mammoth scope caused names like Enron and Madoff to become notorious synonyms. The years 2008 and 2009 were scary and vexing when more than fifteen million US workers were unemployed and businesses failed. Internet selling blurred international boundaries, and for the first time, a true global market resulted. Local sales phones stopped ringing. Another sea-level change had occurred.

During this second decade of the twenty-first century, the global economy is improving. Peak sales professionals and their leaders realize now is the time to sharpen selling skills and grab market share at the expense of laggard competition. Sales teams grow, optimism increases, and the need for sales professionalism rises. The selling process Roy explains in this book has never been more timely or needed.

Salespeople who consider reading and using the principles of World Class Selling ask, What will it do for me?

Think about the ancient Buddhist proverb, When the student is ready, the master appears. If you are an experienced salesperson who read and used the first edition and enjoyed success with it, this book will be most valuable to you. Why? Because the second edition gives new ideas and best practices you can immediately translate into more sales.

Do you wonder what’s the best way to:

• Shorten sales cycles?

• Sell to multiple decision-makers?

• Handle complex sales cycles?

• Defuse irate customer service issues?

• Structure a proposal template?

• Set agendas for product or service training?

• Obtain funding from bankers, venture capitalists, and other sources?

• Integrate the sales process—a missing link—to CRM and SFA software applications?

• Get a pay raise from your boss?

• Convince your spouse or significant other to join you on a long trip in a recreational vehicle—an idea you’ve secretly coveted, at least before the price of gas spiked?

Stop wondering! Track Selling as a communication model is used for all these purposes and more.

For those newer to selling—or whose experience is as order-takers—this book will be most important to you. Why? Because to break old bad selling habits, a successful selling blueprint is needed. Otherwise, novice salespeople keep doing some right things as well as some wrong things. And the longer they keep doing those wrong things, the better they become at getting worse every day.

Roy teaches, The sales professional has formed the habit of doing the things necessary, even though they may include things he or she dislikes doing. In every company, successful people must do things to be successful that they don’t enjoy. In sales, that may mean making cold calls and becoming conditioned to leave voice mails or not flinching at abrupt endings. It may mean closing a sale—facing the moment of truth—and dealing with fear of rejection.

Due to the complexity of selling, salespeople need help every step of the way, especially steps they don’t enjoy. In that context, imagine using a single communication model for the following:

1. Make your prospects’ buying experience more enjoyable by causing them to feel they’re in control of the sales process. Accomplish it with the Five Buying Decisions, also known as the buyer’s hidden agenda.

2. Appeal to your prospects’ emotional reasons for buying, woven into dialogues, voice mails, and e-mail. Your key is use of the Six Buying Motives, also known as the hot buttons of selling.

3. Give yourself and your sales team a blueprint to sell your products or services; use the Track Selling System: seven steps to a sale.

Recently a workshop participant asked me to describe a situation where Track Selling didn’t fit. My answer was, I can’t. In my twenty-five years of business experience, I haven’t had a situation where it didn’t fit.

Track Selling truly has universal application.

Practitioners of Track Selling form the right habits—based on correct principles—and persist over time to succeed. Roy’s teachings become a base of success habits and propel readers to better sales results and to become peak producers in their fields.

Since Roy acquired Max Sacks International following Max’s passing in the 1970’s, his goal and life’s passion has been to improve the sales profession and those involved in selling. He is highly regarded among his peers, and his influence extends around the globe. Such was the case when he served as president of Sales and Marketing Executives International (SMEI). He has helped many thousands of sales professionals, including me.

When I was invited to add an Afterword to Roy’s second edition, I thought of a treasured twenty-five year relationship with the author, his company, Max Sacks International, and the process—the Track Selling System.

Early in my career, I worked as a member of a customer service team for a developer and publisher of accounting software. My employer decided to provide a sales method and training for hundreds of our independent resellers. Channel members were long on technical skills, but struggled with selling. The hope was: improved field-selling skills would improve profitability, loyalty, and market share at the expense of the competition.

During a three-month evaluation, top sales training programs were reviewed. My employer concluded the Track Selling System from Max Sacks International provided the best balance of sales method as well as people-skill training. Partly because I had never sold before and partly due to fate, I was involved in a proof-of-concept field test.

During that process, we adapted the principles of Track Selling for the accounting software sales cycle. Over a period of twelve weeks, we met with twenty-three prospects. The results were dynamite. Of the twenty-three, one bought a competitor’s product, another did not make a decision, and twenty-one bought our product. As Roy says, When selling becomes a procedure, it ceases to be a problem. If it is not a procedure, it will always be a problem. Track Selling is a procedure that works!

That was 1986. We trained hundreds of resellers and saw great results. Years later, I started my own software-reselling company. We used Track Selling as our approach to sales opportunities. Our firm’s sales placed it in the top 1 percent of resellers nationally, and much of our success was due to the principles and techniques of Track Selling.

Salespeople and their managers ask three questions: Does Track Selling work? Can the skills be easily transferred to salespeople willing to learn and try? Can this book be a significant contributor to selling success? My Track Selling experience during the past twenty-five years says the answers are yes, yes, and yes.

Rather than provide a travelogue most readers would find boring—and quit reading before the end—here are three examples of Track Selling epiphany moments. They are offered from personal field use as a Track Selling salesperson beginning in the 1980s and later as a Max Sacks distributor and senior instructor to thousands of workshop participants.

1. Initial product excitement has dwindled regarding Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Sales Force Automation (SFA) tools. A major missing link in those tools is a how-to process that can be translated electronically into a step-by-step guide.

Imagine your computer screen with your CRM/SFA software with the personal information you have completed for the prospect’s rapport-building questions. (Step 1: Approach), answers to vital questions (Step 2: Qualification), an Agreement on Need as discovered during qualification (Step 3: Agreement on Need), information to show and tell about the salesperson’s company based on what was learned during qualification (Step 4: Sell the Company), which features and benefits to present and samples of buying-motive appeal (Step 5: Fill the Need), how to close and deal with objections (Step 6: Act of Commitment), and what to do to after the sale to avoid buyer’s remorse (Step 7: Cement the Sale).

Track Selling makes it happen. As a process-integration model for CRM/SFA, Track Selling is elegantly simple and simply elegant. Salespeople are excited and supportive using tools that give an immediate return on their investment of time. The principles of Track Selling guide them. Sixty percent of Track Selling participants enjoy a 30 percent or more increase in sales. Best-selling practices are perpetuated.

2. In addition to process, World Class Selling describes the psychology of selling and has been field-tested literally thousands of times. This is not pop psychology run wild. These are true principles that can be adapted to any reader’s sales environment.

Imagine an epiphany moment when a salesperson discovers these truisms about selling:

• The way to control a conversation is not by talking; it’s by listening.

• The only time you know what your prospect is thinking is when he or she is talking and you (the salesperson) are listening.

• The human mind is able to multi-task when it is listening but not when it’s talking.

• Therefore, whenever the prospect is talking, you know exactly what they are thinking.

• You control and direct what the prospect is thinking by asking open-ended fact-finding questions and open-ended feeling-finding questions of interest and importance to the prospect.

• Since people buy emotionally—and justify the purchase logically—feeling-finding questions are more valuable to the sales professional than fact-finding.

• Even though feeling-finding questions uncover buying motives (the emotions leading to buying decisions), most salespeople are oblivious to that fact. As a result, they erroneously dwell on facts only and overlook their prospects’ likes, dislikes, opinions and experiences. Novices to selling don’t know what they don’t know. Without a winning procedure, selling will always be a problem to them.

• Therefore, sales pros that skillfully include feeling-finding questions during qualification create a differential over their competition and win more sales.

Salespeople who discover and adjust their selling method are excited and enjoy more success. It’s an example of how Track Selling helps to better qualify. It’s just one of the seven steps. There are six more with great advice and how-tos for every step. It’s good stuff!

3. As of 2010, the results of Track Selling are astounding. Since 1958, more than two hundred fifty thousand sales professionals from more than three thousand corporate clients in twenty-one countries have benefitted from Track Selling. As a sales process, it has proven effective in scores of industries—high-tech and low-tech, public sector, and private sector—for more than fifty years. An average graduate increases his or her sales by 30 percent. Track Selling has survived the test of time and been found worthy of high praise. It’s been a privilege to be part of the process.

In closing, a personal tribute and thanks. Roy and I began working together in the 1980s, and he invested much time, personal mentoring, and resources in my development. In 1989, our nine-year-old daughter Amy was diagnosed with a type of malignant brain cancer called medulloblastoma. She died a year later.

For family reasons, I needed to step away from my work at Max Sacks for several years. During my absence, Roy was supportive, understanding, and a true friend.

That was twenty years ago. Several years ago, I renewed my Max Sacks relationship as a distributor and began, again, to help salespeople obtain better results with Track Selling. It’s been a wonderful and incredible experience.

The year 2009 brought new and difficult challenges for Roy. It’s now my privilege to stand with this dear friend and mentor and, perhaps, in some small way, repay his help to me. I am proud to be counted as a supporter, fan, and friend.

As this second edition goes to press, I offer wishes, of good luck and good selling to Roy Chitwood. I know the best is yet to come!

Love and support,

Ron

Salesman

PREFACE

THE NEW AND CRITICAL ROLE OF SALESPEOPLE

RECENTLY THE HR CHALLY GROUP completed the first World Class Sales Benchmarking Study. This eighteen-month project was sponsored by AGT, Alcoa Building Products, Hobart Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, The Mead Corporation, Northern Telecom Limited, Reynolds & Reynolds, Steelcase, Unisource, and the International Benchmarking Clearinghouse, part of the American Quality and Productivity Center.

The results of this research project focus on what customers want from sellers, critical salesperson skills, and the eight most important sales benchmark areas that contribute to bottom-line profitability.

WHAT CUSTOMERS WANT FROM SELLERS

Interviews with over a thousand corporate customers established three major needs that customers expected vendors and sellers to address, even though they were not confident they could fill them.

1. Customers want to narrow their own focus to the few things they do best and outsource the rest without the added overhead costs of supervising their suppliers.

2. Customers want sellers to know their business well enough to create products and services they wouldn’t have been able to design or create themselves.

3. Customers want proof—hard evidence—that their supplier has added value in excess of price.

THE CRITICAL SALESPERSON ROLE

To evaluate a vendor’s or seller’s potential to fulfill these three needs, these corporate customers specifically judged salespeople on combinations of only seven factors. These seven, listed in descending order of frequency cited, are:

1. Managing our satisfaction personally

2. Understanding our business

3. Recommending products and applications expertly

4. Providing technical and training support

5. Acting as a customer advocate

6. Solving logistical and political problems

7. Finding innovative solutions to our needs

Customers believe that salespeople who excel at these seven factors can best fill their three major business needs.

Our interviews with these corporate customers also resulted in their voting a group of sellers as best or world class. While none of these sales forces was viewed as perfect, they have committed themselves to the goal of meeting all three major customer needs.

By benchmarking these top ten sales forces, we identified the critical success factors for sales and the standards of sales excellence. Benchmarking pinpoints how world-class sales forces manage customer satisfaction, understand their customer’s business, and deliver other critical benefits.

THE BASICS OF WORLD CLASS SELLING

The overriding philosophy of the best sales forces, simply stated, is: Be the outsource of choice.

The basic priority, therefore, is to provide salespeople who add value to the customer’s business.

Adding value requires at least three critical elements:

1. Identify the business needs of customers.

2. Develop the added services to wrap around products that will guarantee improvement in the customer’s business.

3. Measure for continuous improvement refinements as well as proof for customers that their business was improved.

NEW REQUIREMENTS, NEW CULTURE

To be the outsource of choice forces a seller to refocus the corporate culture. Creative engineers or other technical experts who invent new products are not enough to sustain a competitive advantage. Too many new products do not match customers’ priorities, are too difficult to understand or use, or are simply not needed.

The focus must change from product to benefit or business result. Grandiose products and services with more capacity, features, or options are often just seen as overpriced. Additionally, products and services must be simple to use and manage, either in their own right or because the seller manages the complexity as part of the sale.

The focus must also change from price and delivery to utility and ease of use, not only of the product but also in doing business with the seller. The salesperson of choice will take responsibility for managing the relationship—the partnership—between seller and customer. This will require the role of the salesperson and, consequently, the role of the sales manager who trains and develops the salespeople to change.

Our top sellers are changing from peddlers to relationship managers, from order-takers to consultants. In some cases, order taking, service, technical support, and product expertise need not be directly provided by the salesperson.

While the requirements are changing and many of the solutions are new, the approach the top sellers use is remarkably consistent, either intentionally by benchmarking others, through partnerships, or coincidentally by addressing their own needs. Through a total quality styled approach, they are investigating and analyzing their customer needs and problems. They are reorganizing their processes, developing new skills, creating new measures and new standards and, most of all, committing to the need for continuous improvement.

The most basic tenets of total quality management require the biggest investments to be in people and measurement. In fact, the hallmark of how the world-class selling companies can be recognized is in their approach to people and their approach to information and its management.

This leads the greatest single effort toward selecting, developing, and supporting a new kind of salesperson—a fully professional, competent businessperson who delivers real added value.

In short, we’re talking about salespeople who understand World Class Selling.

Howard P. Stevens

CEO, The HR Chally Group

INTRODUCTION

IN THE CURRENT UNCERTAIN ECONOMIC climate, there seems to be no real sense of job security. In fact, the very idea of it grows more and more elusive with every high profile corporate layoff. The dot-com bust and huge cutbacks at corporate giants are only a few examples of the economic shocks that have become commonplace. Add to that the recent revelations of rampant business fraud among some of the country’s largest firms, companies where the leadership has betrayed and bankrupted loyal employees as well as trusting investors, and a sense of fear and mistrust are added to the working population’s general fear over job security. To add to it, many large corporations have chosen to send more and more work overseas, taking advantage of inexpensive foreign labor. Even the advent of the Internet is causing its own problems as virtual suppliers begin to replace the pivotal human interaction between buyer and seller, resulting in a reduced need for staff and loss of jobs. Also, as more companies utilize the practice of reverse bidding in the electronic marketplace, they inadvertently lose thousands of dollars as they spread themselves far too thin, creating unnecessary economic turbulence within the company as they try to be all things to all people.

WHY CHOOSE A CAREER IN SALES?

It’s understandable, then, that the economic news these days is often very grim. It’s become obvious that no single company will be able to provide the job security so many of us need in our lives. In truth, the only person upon whom you can rely to create lasting job security is you. I believe that a career in sales is an excellent way to achieve the long-term job security you seek. The professional salesperson is a vital asset to any company, and when financial chips are down, this value is most clear. Even in financially troubled times, sales professionals who consistently demonstrate their effectiveness have the power to create their own career opportunities.

Currently the sales profession is undergoing a historic change. Each salesperson must decide where he or she stands in relation to this change. On the path from the past, pseudo salespeople maneuver, ambush, trick, and cajole customers into buying a product or service. On the path to the future, up-front, empathetic, professional salespeople serve their customers as advisors, counselors, and even partners.

Forty years of sales experience and contacts with thousands of salespeople have convinced me that, to succeed, today’s salesperson must make the customer’s needs primary. If the customer doesn’t benefit from a sale, the sale shouldn’t take place.

Today’s competitive marketplace is forcing companies to scale back costly sales operations, leaving room only for top-performing salespeople. The seller’s market, which existed for many years, has become a buyer’s market. Companies don’t need salespeople to take orders; they need salespeople who can sell. Incompetent salespeople are becoming unemployed salespeople.

Only the cream-of-the-crop salespeople will remain. Out of necessity they will practice partnership selling. They will be actively engaged in their clients’ business affairs as consultants and counselors. Companies are reducing the number of vendors they deal with and want partnerships with those they retain. Customers will turn from salespeople who cannot or will not forge such partnerships to salespeople who are willing and able to help them succeed. A salesperson’s success will depend on the success of his or her customers.

Today’s more sophisticated customers no longer tolerate the fast-talking, backslapping salesperson whose only concern is his or her pocketbook. Nor are clients satisfied with a salesperson who simply promotes a product or service as the best on the market. Clients want salespeople who help them solve problems and who enlighten them on new ways to improve their business.

World Class Selling is an about-face from obsolete, hard-sell tactics. The method you use in your sales career is by far the most pivotal part of your development as a sales professional. In World Class Selling you will learn the Track Selling System, the precise, step-by-step scientific procedure that covers all the points in the selling process, from the approach to the close and follow-up, leaving nothing to chance. Behind this procedure is an ethical philosophy— a win/win philosophy of serving the customer—you can rely on when you need to make a decision. It works when you are selling for your company, yourself, within an organization as a CEO or manager, and even in your personal life. It will be the key to becoming more than a salesperson—it will help you to grow into an accomplished sales professional capable of creating a solid sense of career continuity in an otherwise tumultuous economic climate.

As a world class sales professional, you help eliminate the popular stereotype of a salesperson as an insincere, pushy individual who would happily sell the proverbial refrigerator to an Eskimo. World Class Selling involves doing things for the client rather than to the client. This helping relationship, similar to the doctor-patient or lawyer-client relationship, is the key to successful selling.

Whether you’re a seasoned professional or a newcomer to sales, you’ll find your confidence skyrocketing when you learn and practice World Class Selling. As Dick Boudreau of American Linen Supply puts it, I went into it [the workshop] thinking, ‘Okay, what are they going to show me?’ I think many guys my age have this attitude. ‘I’ve been kicking around in this business for twenty-six years. What are you going to teach me about selling?’ But the Track Selling System takes people from where they are to the next level. I embraced it immediately.

THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON SALES

In today’s competitive marketplace, a company’s future depends more on its sales and marketing ability than on any other facet of its business. Without sales, nothing happens. W. Edwards Deming says that a company must focus on the consumer, not the product, as the most important part of the production line.

Deming founded the Total Quality Management (TQM) movement. TQM shifted the focus in manufacturing from profits to quality and from the individual to the team. TQM is working well. Costs are down; profits are up; consumers are more satisfied; teamwork is replacing old win/lose ways. New methods and processes ensure that the consumer receives quality service as well as a quality product.

TQM works because it insists that a logical, step-by-step process is central to improving production. The TQM process can be applied to any product, from potato chips to computer chips. Every organization has a production process as well as an accounting process, a distribution process, and an administrative process—but what about sales? Which organization has a sales process? Sales tend to be left to chance. Typically, salespeople are given product knowledge and motivational hype and then sent out to sink or swim. Is it any wonder that salespeople feel pressured, panic, and then don’t close sales? Without training, a process, and assistance, how can salespeople enhance the quality of their relationship with the customer? How can they become sales professionals?

Recently, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software and Sales Force Automation (SFA) software have become powerful tools in the sales process. The automated processes and workflow features of SFA software can replace the mundane, manual activities that typically require a salesperson’s assistance and time. For example, sending an agreement-on-need email letter to C-level executives of a prospect can be done manually or can be triggered and sent via SFA workflow. Or SFA scripting of powerful qualification questions can lead to electronic mentoring and selecting the features to present and buying motives to appeal to. However, CRM and/or SFA alone do not work because they are only two pieces of the sales process and have been overestimated in their importance. The more discussions I have with professionals from all industries, the more obvious it is that an intangible yet pivotally important piece is missing: an understanding of what CRM or SFA is and what it is not. Companies buy software applications expecting a process, only to learn later that it’s actually an automation tool. Therefore, regardless of how functional the application, salespeople must still manage it. A CRM or SFA application does not become a sales process, which in essence means it cannot replace salespeople. CRM or SFA can help an organization and its salespeople manage the sales process but is incapable of circumventing or replacing it. With a clear understanding of what CRM and SFA applications are—and are not—sales organizations can thrive with their implementation. Furthermore, integrating such applications with the seven steps of the Track Selling System into sales organizations can rapidly and dramatically increase results.

For the past forty years, I have developed, practiced, and taught the principles, skills, and techniques covered in World Class Selling. Like TQM, CRM, and SFA, World Class Selling can be applied to any product or service ultimately to benefit the customer. It can help you sell an idea or a personal relationship. Our organization has worked with more than two hundred fifty thousand salespeople from over three thousand companies in twenty-one countries. We know World Class Selling works because it has helped these salespeople increase sales and profits. This increase in productivity and profits flows from the basic premise of World Class Selling: serve the customer. It’s that simple.

BECOMING A SALES PROFESSIONAL

World Class Selling is founded on ethics, caring, and service. Therefore, a World Class Salesperson must be well schooled in building relationships. Most sales literature and training focuses on closing the sale. Sales trainers talk about identifying customers’ needs and building long-term relationships, but they tend to make these goals secondary to the sale itself. That distorts the process. The sales role of today can be such that the sale is considered yet another step—an important one, to be sure—toward establishing a long-term helping relationship.

Today’s corporate environment imposes this new paradigm of integrity. The sleazy salesperson in the baggy blue suit is a relic of the past. They know prospects don’t buy false promises; they want salespeople to tell it like it is. Buyers demand more than a good price. They want honest value for their investment.

It’s human to be nervous about operating in a changing environment. The Track Selling System prepares you to handle calmly most situations you will encounter. Because it’s based on a win/win philosophy of serving the customer, you never need to con or pressure a prospect or do anything against your standards or contrary to your personality.

There is nothing wrong with selling. There is something wrong with trying to manipulate people into buying.

THE PROFITS OF ETHICS

Here is what a few of the many World Class Selling professionals have to