I attended an industry training last week and was fortunate to have several sales experts provide me with some great management ideas. I’ll take a quick minute to share a couple of the insights provided me by Robert Jolles, author of Customer Centered Selling.

He was speaking about the natural tendency that most sales people have of speaking a lot and listening a little and suggested that we purchase a cheap chess clock. He recommended that we pull out the chess clock next time we conduct training and have a salesperson role play using the clock. As the conversation switches from “salesperson” to the “prospect” each should push their respective button on the clock. At the end of the exercise make sure that the prospect was speaking more than the sales agent. |

In addition to the clock idea Mr. Jolles suggested that agents be provided with a cheat sheet of sorts when they conduct their initial meeting with a potential client. This could simply be a list of questions that the agent should be asking and could be written in one of the margins in their lined notebook. Providing this framework will help the agent to stay on a clearly defined path and give them an organized framework from which they can operate. (Before creating the questions, consider speaking with a sales consultant that will help to organize them in the most effective way possible.)

Jake Lunt is the General Manager of Idaho Operations for A Plus Benefits, Inc.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 at 11:29 am and is filed under Creativity, Sales. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.