Tool-Based ProActive Selling

Tool-Based ProActive Selling
What happened here? What went on during this sales call? Isn’t it common for a salesperson to get excited during a sale when the customer gives direction on what to do next, especially if it is a senior manager? All too often, the best sales strategy is planned out before the call, and then during the sales call, the salesperson makes a mistake and loses control. If Brad does what the senior executive asked him to do, that is, talk to Kurt and Seline, Brad will be spending much more time adjusting the sales strategy with his sales manager than building his selling tactics around the new strategy. He will be in a reactive sales mode and will be hoping that the customer selects him and his company as the winning vendor. He will also be hoping to see the senior manager again at some time during the process. Hope is a good thing, but not in sales. Putting strategies in front of tactics results in merely hoping for a good outcome, and is the wrong approach.

Instead of just hoping for the best, salespeople need to develop a toolbox of selling tools, so that when they make their pitch, they can execute their sales tactics flawlessly. The strategy part of selling comes later.
Brad used his Summarize, Bridge, and Pull tool, a tactic to keep the buy or sell process under his control. By mastering his sales tools, Brad was able to keep this deal alive and own the buy and sell process.
When all is said and done, the salesperson who owns the process owns the deal. Keeping in control of the process is the hard part, especially if you do not have the tools to do the job correctly. ProActive Selling has 20 sales tools and five sales manager tools that you can use during the sales call to establish, recover from, and maintain control of the sales process. These will help you to increase the chances a deal will go your way and minimize the chances you will hear a no, or worse, a maybe.


From the proactive selling book.