 Sales
Best Practices
Everyone's A
Salesperson
By Brian Tracy
All top executives are
excellent salespeople. All effective employees use sales
techniques to get their coworkers and bosses to
cooperate with them in getting the job done. Everyone
who is effective in virtually any area of life that
involves other people is an excellent salesperson of
some kind.
The basis for all successful sales efforts is a
discipline called gap analysis. Gap analysis is clearly
defining what your idea, product, or service can do for
a person and then deciding how to demonstrate that in a
compelling way.
The very best persuaders, communicators, and salespeople
are those who concentrate their attention on identifying
the exact gap that exists and determining how big it is.
They then focus on widening that gap in every possible
way, until the prospect begins to feel more and more
dissatisfied with his or her current situation and more
and more desirous of enjoying the preferable situation
that is achievable by the use of the product, service,
or idea.
The most astute salespeople are those who are capable of
finding a small gap and then expanding it into a wide
gap. They are capable of discovering a small problem or
dissatisfaction in the mind of the prospect and then, by
questioning and commenting, increase it until the
prospect develops an intense desire for the solution
they are offering.
When you meet prospects for the first time, you will
find that they are usually unaware that a gap exists
between where they are and where they could be. They
will often say things like, “I’m not interested,” or “I
can’t afford it,” or “We’re quite happy with our current
situation.” These are normal and natural responses. No
one likes to change. Your job is to describe a state of
even greater satisfaction that they could enjoy if they
did something different. Virtually all advertising is
aimed at showing people how much better off they could
be with a product or service that they have not yet
acquired.
Gap analysis is based on asking good questions —
questions focused on discovering problems that might be
troubling the prospect. There is a direct correlation
between the use of good questioning techniques and sales
success. The more and better questions you ask aimed at
finding a problem or uncovering dissatisfaction, the
more interest the prospect will have and the more sales
you will make. The person who asks questions has
control.
Good salespeople always plan the wording of their
questions, rewriting them and practicing them before
they get face-to-face with a prospect. Poor salespeople,
on the other hand, make up their questions as they go
along.
One question is an application of the “magic-want
technique.” Imagine that you have a magic wand that you
can wave over the prospect and you ask this question:
“Mr. Prospect, if this situation were absolutely perfect
in every respect, what would it look like?” Then remain
completely silent. When the prospect begins to describe
that perfect situation, you’ll uncover the gaps you can
fill to create his ideal future. When you explain how
your product or service can bridge those gaps, you will
greatly enhance your chances of making a sale.
A great set of questions begins with the words What if?
For example, you can ask, “What if we could achieve this
particular result for you; what effect would that have
on your current operations?” Good questions that grab
the prospect’s attention will start him or her
visualizing and imagining an ideal future state, exactly
the state that your product or service is meant to
achieve.
A final key to effective selling through gap analysis is
to share some of the experiences of people who have
previously purchased your product or service. Use
third-party references, testimonials, and anecdotes. Say
something like, “I have a very good customer who had a
similar situation to yours not long ago.” Then go on to
explain how your customer was able to rectify that
situation in a cost-effective way by accepting your
recommendation.
The wonderful thing about selling is that it is a
learned skill. And the more effective you are at
selling, the more successful you will be in every area
of your life.
Brian Tracy is the
bestselling author of more than 42 books, published in
40 countries and translated into dozens of languages.
Brian is a world renowned speaker and seminar leader,
addressing more than 250,000 people each year throughout
the US, Canada and in 40 other countries.
Brian is Chairman and CEO of Brian Tracy International,
and President of Brian Tracy University, a private
on-line University for Sales and Entrepreneurship. He
can be reached at
www.briantracy.com,
www.briantracyu.com or 858-481-2977.
Published August 2007 Bay
Area Business Magazine
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