Linda Palermo of Sandler Training.
“You can’t teach a kid to ride a bike at a seminar.”
So said Linda Palermo of Sandler Training in San Rafael at the outset of her “A Better Way to Close a Deal” seminar, part of the ongoing The Essentials series from the Mill Valley, San Rafael, Corte Madera and Tiburon chambers of commerce.
Palermo drove home that point right away to set expectations. “You can’t learn to sell overnight – it’s like learning Spanish,” she said.
Every salesperson needs to develop a system, Palermo said. One of the keys to doing so is to get out from the shadow of “hundreds of years of bad salespeople” and not to fall prey to their cliched, tired strategies that have given salespeople an oft-deserved bad reputation.
“In the world of selling, you have two systems at work,” Palermo said. “The prospect (buyer) system and the seller system." While those two systems in terms of perspective, they share the same problems: misperceptions, mistrust and stigma.
“This is the buyer-seller dance,” Palermo said. “It’s like ballroom dancing – one person, in this case the prospect, controls everything. To change the game, you have to have a system of your own and take control of the sales process.”
One of the key ways to do that is the Sandler System, which calls on salespeople to break the defensive wall built up by prospects by building a rapport, not coming off like a salesperson and putting the person at ease with your words but also with your tonality and body language. She recommended establishing a set of advance ground rules, including the possibility that the salesperson could determine that their product or service wasn’t a good fit for the prospect. That creates an equal business stature between seller and buyer.
“You have something to offer – salespeople shouldn’t beg,” she said. “Have dignity.”
Once that equal footing is established, salespeople should get beyond the surface-level needs of the prospect and focus on a deeper relationship.
“People buy emotionally – they only justify their decisions intellectually,” Palermo said. “Get them talking emotionally instead of intellectually.”
Palermo emphasized that all of the aforementioned work should happen before your sales presentation. “You don’t present to an unqualified customer,” she said. “You should close them before you get to the presentation. The presentation is just a formality about how you are going to make it happen for them.”
GO HERE for more info on Sandler Training. Here's a portion of Palermo's presentation:
So said Linda Palermo of Sandler Training in San Rafael at the outset of her “A Better Way to Close a Deal” seminar, part of the ongoing The Essentials series from the Mill Valley, San Rafael, Corte Madera and Tiburon chambers of commerce.
Palermo drove home that point right away to set expectations. “You can’t learn to sell overnight – it’s like learning Spanish,” she said.
Every salesperson needs to develop a system, Palermo said. One of the keys to doing so is to get out from the shadow of “hundreds of years of bad salespeople” and not to fall prey to their cliched, tired strategies that have given salespeople an oft-deserved bad reputation.
“In the world of selling, you have two systems at work,” Palermo said. “The prospect (buyer) system and the seller system." While those two systems in terms of perspective, they share the same problems: misperceptions, mistrust and stigma.
“This is the buyer-seller dance,” Palermo said. “It’s like ballroom dancing – one person, in this case the prospect, controls everything. To change the game, you have to have a system of your own and take control of the sales process.”
One of the key ways to do that is the Sandler System, which calls on salespeople to break the defensive wall built up by prospects by building a rapport, not coming off like a salesperson and putting the person at ease with your words but also with your tonality and body language. She recommended establishing a set of advance ground rules, including the possibility that the salesperson could determine that their product or service wasn’t a good fit for the prospect. That creates an equal business stature between seller and buyer.
“You have something to offer – salespeople shouldn’t beg,” she said. “Have dignity.”
Once that equal footing is established, salespeople should get beyond the surface-level needs of the prospect and focus on a deeper relationship.
“People buy emotionally – they only justify their decisions intellectually,” Palermo said. “Get them talking emotionally instead of intellectually.”
Palermo emphasized that all of the aforementioned work should happen before your sales presentation. “You don’t present to an unqualified customer,” she said. “You should close them before you get to the presentation. The presentation is just a formality about how you are going to make it happen for them.”
GO HERE for more info on Sandler Training. Here's a portion of Palermo's presentation: