The key to making sales techniques work is to make them a part of your sales process and a part of you. Unless a sales technique is part of your “normal” thought process and well integrated into your sales process execution will be difficult.
Learning Sales Techniques
The best way to master a sales technique is to first truly understand the technique from the theoretical point of view. Make sure when you study the technique that you understand the definitions of all of the terms being used in the explanation. And make sure that you are using the same definitions as the author.
If you have any misunderstood words or terms, or are using a different definition than the author you will not get certainty on the technique and you will have trouble applying it in the real world.
Next, examine the technique looking for exactly where you could use it in your own sales process. Find the most obvious application of the sales techniques you are trying to incorporate and then write out a couple of examples of exactly how you would use it in a real situation.
Make sure you take the customer’s side and try to anticipate what might occur so that you can be prepared.
Then take your written examples and compare them to the theory in the book or article where you learned them.
The final step is to incorporate them into your sales calls. After each call review exactly what happened and compare it to your own examples and the theory. Use this to tune your application of the sales technique.
There is one other thing you can do to make absolutely sure that you have the technique down cold, teach it to someone else. Teaching others is one of the best ways to quickly find out what it is that you don’t know. If you have any problems explaining the sales techniques to others, you can be sure that you don’t know them well enough to use them effortlessly and correctly.
Follow this advice and you will find that you can learn and apply any new technique. If you have any difficultly applying what you have studied, check to see that you don’t have any misunderstandings in the source of your study.
