Skip – you’re absolutely right about many salespeople flipping the order and importance of asking vs telling. I think many are thrown off because often the potential customer will ask you to tell them about you and your company first – and they then delve into the full tell pitch. What they need is a brief intro that links neatly into their questioning.

Colin – I had thought of calling the article “pencil selling” – but wondered if anyone else still used the phrase – obviously I’m not alone! And I fully agree – you really need to do your homework. Nowadays you can’t afford to do your research on the customers time – especially not with senior executives.

Brad – I really like your points about how you feel when someone “brochure sells” – I get the same sinking feeling myself. Yet at the same time, I know how easy it is to succumb to “preparing something” and then using it as a crutch.

Ian

I am a big fan of selling without slides myself. The trick to it is developing a pattern to your conversations that you plan to follow, and then using your open probing questions to “stick to the plan” as best you can. You will never stay directly on track, but if you do a good job of layering questions, and understanding where you are and where you want to get to you will get very good at closing deals while sharing a minimum amount of printed material or PowerPoint.

A closing thought… When I watch a sales person sell me with brochures, I make two assumptions. First, this sales person lacks confidence and needs promotional material to make them look good. Second, The sales person does not know enough about my problems to sell to me with out a brochure to guide the conversation.

-Brad

Good post, agree with you… walking talking brochures don’t add value.

‘Chalk and talk’ (aka ‘pencil selling’) as we used to say is a much more impressive approach and will show that you have a deep understanding.

The only thing I would add is that you need to do your homework before you go. You need to have a deep understanding of the prospect’s company and their challenges… you shouldn’t ask them, you should already know and therefore craft great questions around their challenges which make them think… the harder the questions the better!

Everyone knows that a salesperson should first identify needs (as you point out), and THEN present product/service solutions that fill that need. It’s utterly basic in selling, but many salespeople flip those two steps so that the initial contact is all about presenting product and company information to the prospect. This TELL focus instead of ASK focus can be have devastating consequences.

Slides can certainly enhance a presentation, but I don’t think slides can do much of anything for a needs assessment.

Welcome to the May 17, 2008 edition of Carnival of Sales & Management Success. This week we had 28 submissions and I cut it down to the best 12 posts. There is some really great stuff here, some from people you are used to seeing almost every week, and…