If you've been following along, on 9/16, I promised 10 New Articles on Selling Competencies. I published the last one yesterday. If you missed any, you can read them all here.

At the end of the last article, I promised a special offer. Here it is.

I'm sitting in the service department at 9:17 on September 28, 2021. This exchange actually started with the same service department at 9:42 on September 20, 2019. Two years ago. Spooky coincidence.

Sorry. That's a serious question. As you may know, I've worked with a few salespeople. Often. Very often. Most often, the more closely that management monitors how well the reps follow the process, the more it hurts them.

An old story and a new story...

Look at this.

Here's the scary part. This rep is not in the bottom 10%. He's in the middle of the over 2 million that we've evaluated.

   ...but not the kind that blows up in your face.

I just Googled "closing tactics". 34,800,000 results in less than a second. My favorite close is, "What should we do now?" The typical reply is, "How do we get started?" If it doesn't sound like that, it's not time to close. I missed something and I either have to go back and fix it, or I walk away. So, how do I set up my question?

Seriously! Are they? Do they have any freakin' idea what "value" is?

If you rewind the clock a few decades, you'll probably be reminded that when most employers were looking to hire a salesperson, they were looking for someone that could 'hunt' up some new opportunities and 'close' the deals. Mostly, with one exception, they were looking for someone that could go door to door or would make telephone cold calls to find business. The one exception

This is a short article that will make it's point quickly.