Frankie;
I deliberately passed on remarking on your comments on 05-20-2008 about Sharon.
Though I hear she is excellent I have no expereince to support that one way or another (and can say I respect the opinion of the owner of this forum who told me she was really good). However, I want to remark on this nonetheless, even with all this time gone by, as our very profession is undermined by such a thought, at least in my opinion. And because I beleive so strongly in what I stated that I can't leave this be.
Allow me to first predicate my opinion by stating a few facts aboiut me, to help you understand how well I have researched this topic. I am 48, now inmy 31st year as a sales pro.
I have both; (1) interviewed a lot of top sales training factions for an article, which I never wrote, originally intended for this website. In fact, that process, which took me 3 solid months, lead to the discovery that the sales training industry, with the advent of the Internet, has clearly back slid from the last time I conducted the same project; (2) 25 years ago (when I was 23).
Also, realize, I was the youngest in the history of Xerox to take and successfully complete Professional Selling Skills (PSS II, at 17, in 1977. I later became a PSS III Coach in 1983), the training course that came before SPIN, which resulted from Xerox paying a then younger Neil Rackham to go along on sales calls and quantify that which had never been done before. Neil was not a salesman by the way.
Here is a direct quote by someone who reviewed the course that was a result of Neil's work, called SPIN, that comes from a web page with the rightful title "SPIN selling is good", which is as follows;
"The original survey showed that in successful sales calls it's the buyer who does most of the talking, which means that the salespeople are asking questions."
Well, hate to pop this to you, Neil or any other sales trainer or sales professional (reader), this was well known fact long before Neil quantitified it through zsales calling tracking (which, by the way, was a tool suggested by Xerox's main training program at the time; PSS).
Here is another comment on that web page;
"The first students trained in the "SPIN" model showed an average of 17% improvement in sales results. "
And, as I said as a result of my first research survey 25 years ago into sales training factions or schools; that is because - suprise, surprise - these 'students' were not very well trained before taking SPIN.
It is the only answer that makes sense.
You see, we trained the number one Minolta sales person worldwide (our company was then called Pro-Formance Masters). He was hired part time by Minotla Business Machines in the U.S. and Canada to travel city to city on weekends and do one day sales training events ... this is the man who out performed all of the people trained in many different schools of training, including SPIN and others, too manyb to mention, and he did not work in New York, Chicago, L.A., London, England, Rio or any one of the top 10 cities in the world as you might imagine. He also did not have a patch in Connecticut where all the big insurance firms are based or anything like that. In other words, he did not get lucky ... he haioled from Toronto.
He mastered probing and closing using the PSS training skills, which are not unlike the probing taught by SPIN doctors (please excuse the obvious meaning). In fact, the only true differnecfe in what is taught between PSS and SPIN is to expand on the PAIN or the PROBLEM/CHALLENGE that your product or service can address, once the prospect has told you in their own words that this is thier issue.
Of course, to be fair, PSS was designed as a BASIC course, one that would come before or as a prerequisite to advanced skills that could and should be taught as well ... it is just that SPIN introduces them as part of the basic skills training, makign the distinbction that PROCESS is important - this is the kind of thinking you would expect from an engineer (No, I am not knocking anything - just makign acloear point about process improvment).
J. Douglas Edwards - of whom Tom Hopkins was an avid student - taught that "telling is not selling" in the 50's and 60's, right through to his death. Others have noted the same ... in fact, the earliest referance in tltierature that I am aware of comes from before the 1st world war (no, I can't quote this, as it should not be an issue 60 years later! Why must we keep proving that which has long since been evident???)!
"The art of salesmanship; helping the prospect buy what they need and may also desire" could be restated as "Buying facilitation".
Sharon may use unique ways of expressing that which is important, she may have adopted phraseology to explain sales technique(s), as we did with GOLD CALLING ® to replace cold calling. She may use slightly different tlanguage in her sales technqiues, but that does not mean sales people or prospects are any different than they were in the days of the mythcial carpet sales person - the one used to make a point in "The greatest salesman in the world", which was written by Og Mandio and made huge by Rich DeVos (by recommending it to Amway distributors).
Morality has not changed. People's motivations have not changed - and, if I may state this in a somewhat blunt way - it is and always will be to your prospect; "What's in it for me?" And that is why salesmanship has not changed.
If Sharon attracts and causes more sales people to become masters at the world's great communcation art, then I second the fact that she has found a way to make believers that salesmanship is just that; an art. That sales people have great skills, that not everyone can become a professipnal sales person - but that does not mean that I think she uncovered something the rest of us (professional sales trainers for hundreds of years, even millenium) missed.
Package it any way you like, all you have done is changed the look of that package, the wrapping may be different but not the message.
And while I aplaud the efforts of Og Mandino, J. Douglas Edwards, Tom Hopkins, Peter Burke, Neil Rackham, Sharon Drew Morgan and may others ... God helps us if we, at this perhaps thegreatest unbiased sales training web site on the Internet, cannot understand this as truth. Selling hasn't changed - the consultaative approach was not invented by Neil Rackham nor have the CPSA, DSA or any other association invented or introduced anything new in sales in the last few decades, period.
Most certainly none of the "Nouveau Sales Schools", who have done nothing remarkeable, except perhaps in their own small way driven our profession back about 50 years in development!
Sorry, can't agree. Sharon may be incredible but that does not mean anything remarkable has been developed in terms of inter personal communication skills for the selling profession (please leave email and new fangled marketing out of my intent).
FEAR is really of the unknown. You can only elminate the unknown through experience and training.
Re-read the last paragraph, that was all that was needed to effectively answer the question posed by this thread. The rest was simply expanding on that statement of ultimate truth!
