“Don’t stop doing good solid selling activity that’s worked in the past just because you’re looking for something new and shiny and more exciting.” – Fred Copestake in today’s Tip 853
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Fred Copestake. Over the last 22 years, Fred has traveled around the world 14 times visited 36 countries, and worked with over 10,000 salespeople. He has taken the things that really make a difference in modern selling and put them in his book ‘Selling Through Partnering Skills’. Here he is:
Fred Copestake: Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Okay. So what do I mean by that? What I mean is, don’t stop doing good solid selling activity that’s worked in the past just because you’re looking for something new and shiny and more exciting. A lot of good things have gone before and we need to identify those things which are still relevant and do still work and use them today. There are some things which aren’t relevant anymore and we do need to throw those out. But some good, solid sales best practices we need to keep.
I talk a lot about the Evolution of Sales. I wrote about it in my book and what we see from the different decades of selling are many good things that we can still use here and now.
If we look back to the ’50s where we talk about the sales process a lot. Absolutely, I would recommend that people have a good solid sale structure and overall process and structures, of course, structures of meetings to make sure we do the right things at the right time.
’60s we took the psychology of selling, and now we still talk about how can you adapt your style, how can you adapt what you say and do to fit with the person you’re talking to.
’70s where we talk about benefits selling. We got to understand why somebody interested in what we’re talking about. What’s in it for them. Use so what tests to make sure that we’re talking about things that they are going to get benefit from.
The ’80s, we talked a lot about closing and some kind of nefarious techniques that but ultimately salespeople’s advancement. And we are still always trying to do that. That’s a lesson we can take from that decade.
’90s taught us all about consultative selling. Asking questions really well. Understanding what the root causes, what the impacts, what are the effects that somebody has on them, their business. If we could help them understand that we’re really starting to add value as a salesperson. And that’s certainly what we learn from the ’90s were adding value, focusing on gain, thinking how we can really move the customer’s business along by helping them with the outcomes they’re looking for. Get it good, solid practice that we want to maintain, we want to keep.
In the ’10s, I was talking about sales stature, talk about how you position yourself to be the go-to person in the market. Would probably call that personal branding now and again, it makes sense that we want to make sure people perceived us as being the person that they want to operate with. So how we might use LinkedIn, how we could share information, how we can do things and get the reputation as the go-to person.
In the ’20s, for me, it’s all about collaborative selling. Yes, it’s a little bit new, but really it’s all about being customer-centric. It’s focusing on them and thinking about how can we do things to help them.
I think if we look to the pass off, definitely things that we can take and we can still use today. There are things we don’t want to do. They don’t work anymore. They’re not as good. But please do not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Scott Ingram: For a link to Fred’s LinkedIn profile and to take his free 60-second Modern Selling Assessment, just click over to DailySales.Tips/853
Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!