Xerox Professional Selling Skills

Xerox Professional Selling Skills. Is this training still around?

Gee, I took PSS 1 and PSS 2 way back in 1985.

Didn't Mike Bosworth develop or at least have significant input on the development of PSS before he left to start up Solution Selling and now Customer-Centric Selling? I think Neil Rackham may have also had something to do with it.

PSS is probably okay for selling pencils between salespeople (an inside joke if you've ever taken PSS), but I consider it to be overly manipulative. I would think that anybody using it today in a sophisticated B2B selling environment would find themselves thrown out on their ear.

A quick GOOGLE search shows that there are some people who claim to offer some form of PSS training.

Jim Cundiff

Xerox's Professional Selling Skills program was ultimately picked up by AchieveGlobal. I went through one of these sessions about 7 years ago; it's still a pretty solid all-around program. Having gone through both, I'd say the Professional Sales Coaching program is better (it's geared towards managers, so it's not a replacement for PSS).

Quote:

Originally Posted by jcundiff

PSS is probably okay for selling pencils between salespeople (an inside joke if you've ever taken PSS), but I consider it to be overly manipulative. I would think that anybody using it today in a sophisticated B2B selling environment would find themselves thrown out on their ear.

How does it compare to SPIN Selling or does it?

It's all evolutionary. To be biblical for a moment, PSS begat SPIN and SPIN begat Solution Selling. Each "generation" moved more toward being consultative and away from being manipulative. All three ignore the role of politics and pre-existing preference in a complex sale.

Jim Cundiff

Quote:

Originally Posted by jcundiff

It's all evolutionary. To be biblical for a moment, PSS begat SPIN and SPIN begat Solution Selling. Each "generation" moved more toward being consultative and away from being manipulative. All three ignore the role of politics and pre-existing preference in a complex sale.

Jim Cundiff

Jim, please expand on that last sentence. Not so much with an outline of the systems in that context, but rather with how you personally place a value on that particular reality.

In other words, in your opinion, is it good...or not so good?

Thanks.

While at Xerox, I was "dipped in these waters". As an ex-Xoid, I've been thru the spectrum of sales training since.

Vestiges of these XLS courses are beaten into the fabric of my selling style but, Jim's comment about being thrown out of B2B selling situations is not really accurate. If he genuinely has followed someone through that kind of quality training, he knows that they have adapted to change. AND, he knows that the really good SRs took the best of each and wove them into their selling style.

I'm sure that while I was still in the pin-stripes and starched whites, the PSS was close to the surface. I find it offensive, however, to have called my style (even then) "manipulative". Every SR out there has a personal style and I was diligent to inject some flavour into my approach.

Listening skills were the at the top of my list and, while probing, I was quite effective at getting the customer's point of view on the table early. We worked at identifying their needs and, in an effort to move the sales cycle along, I would close throughout (for more meetings, demonstration, presentation, etc.).

Yes, PSS evolved into SPIN (situation, problems, implications, and needs pay-off). But there's a story behind it. At the time, Xerox was winning 4 out of 5 "sales confrontations" (according to 3rd party research paid for by Xerox corporate). BUT, on further review of the data: they were involved in only 4 out of 10 sales opportunities! Huthwaite in GB was tasked to get inside the issue as Rank Xerox was "sucking canal water" compared to the rest of the company. What they found (while making extensive 2 man calls with Rank Xerox SRs) was that those who were consistently successful spent more time asking questions about the customer's situation and problems ... you can see where this led.

I was part of the "alpha program" at Xerox Canada. It was our impression that SPIN was awkward but effective.

Good luck & Good Selling!
Pat

If I am not mistaken Xerox Learning Systems, a separate company set up to market the program that was originally developed for Xerox reps, later became known as International Learning Systems. I lost touch with it in the late eighties or early nineties ... do not know what happened after that.

And, I cannot agree more with what OUTSource Sales stated about "manipulative". Then or now, I not only don't feel like a manipulator, I feel very in touch with my prospect's needs and know how to satisfy them. Selling really is a need satisfaction process, though you could certainly invent a lot of ways to say essentially the same thing.

If you call directing sales dialog manipulative, the great majority of what is practiced in Need Satisfaction Selling is just letting the prospect talk (using open probes, also called open ended questions). I hardly call letting the prospect say whatever is on their mind controlling or manipulative.

Since I owned a copy of Xerox PSS III and still have it, I can say that I know the product as well as just about anyone. I sat in on over 100 weekend events over the years, having taken the lead "coach" role more than 40 times.

Most of the other training systems I have studied simply use different terminology to explain the same important elements of the sale or, for example, customer attitudes. And, though I never sat through SPIN, I'm 100% comfortable with not having taken it.

OUTSource Sales was bang on when he stated that PSS III was quality training.

I've also fallen out-of-touch with XLS/ILS et al but Huthwaite is still out there. Just to drive home my point, here's a current quote from Huthwaite's site:

Huthwaite’s story begins with our founder, Neil Rackham, a behavioral psychologist whose seminal 12-year research study of sales excellence remains to this day the only research effort of its kind. Observing and analyzing more than 35,000 sales calls conducted by the world's leading selling organizations in 23 countries, Neil and his research team were able to isolate and identify distinct behavioral traits of successful sales people.

The point being that the approach was based on research and is proven successful.

Good luck & Good selling!
Pat

Okay, perhaps the term manipulative is a bit strong. The research that Rackham and Huthwaite and Bosworth used was and is ground-breaking. When I took PSS I and PSS II and Solution Selling, I was enlightened by the way research into a sales person's best practices could be applied to my selling methodology.

I still contend that PSS and Solution-Selling and other similar methods ignore the role of politics and preference in their approach. No matter how strong a solution I can build with a prospect, if they are politically aligned against me Solution-Selling has no method to address this. These methods also do not cover the degree to which a particular prospect contact prefers my solution to that of competitors - either negative or positive.

The company I work for - The Complex Sale founded by Rick Page in 1994 - combines the best concepts of solution-oriented selling with methods to address politics and preference. It's a modern, proven method that actually sticks with sales people because it works for the long term.

Finally, these older methods ignore the changes that have occurred with buyers. Because of the internet and other information sources, buyers can be very far down the buying cycle path before a salesperson ever gets a hint that a prospect is in buying mode. Salespeople risk becoming a negative to the sales process if they don't add value to the equation by helping to solve a business problem with their products and services.

Buyers don't want to be put through some mechanical process. They want someone to come in, identify a problem and provide a cost-effective solution.

Okay, I'll bet I've really lit the fuse now.

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