I get your main point that selling skills are important to being successful, as it is in any professional trade. And I get that the selling profession is not dead. But I am getting weary of the predatory language typically used in selling. Having a focus on selling skills and maintaining a hunger for the sale is OK, but seriously:

Me, warrior, means customer = adversary
Me, hunter, means customer = prey
Me, closer, means customer = needs to be “closed” or “persuaded against their will”

I think connotations matter.

While I agree that we don’t need to get too caught up in pop-psychology, touch-feely gimmicks at the OTHER end of the continuum, I don’t think it is the death of the profession to consider raising the bar a bit for the profession.

I had between 40 – 60% close rate (yes, it varied sometimes) without having to resort to viewing the customer with anything other than the same type of respect that I would want.

You don’t have to resort to faded old cheesy selling “techniques” to remain active, aggressive toward your goals, energized, and totally sold out to your profession and to building your sales.

I can sense your resistance to the watering down of sales effectiveness by being too passive, and I share that disdain. But I don’t believe that taking the high road is necessary just trying to be a “nice guy,” nor is it wearing a straight-jacket.

Finally, in defense of the “sales sniper,” he wasn’t in the proper forum to say fully what he meant, so I suspect he just tried to find the fewest words possible to articulate a bigger idea: Many CUSTOMERs would be put-off by that because it would be a very transparent effort to manipulate them into a sale instead of inspiring a genuine desire to buy. He may have been suggesting that these “closing techniques” may not be as effective nowadays as they once were.

A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.

Nonetheless, sales people revert to price when their sales skills run out of bandwidth. For some that is immediately and is their default for others it may take a little more pressure.

Our point of view says;

Value + relationship = no negotiating!

When we know, understand and own our value proposition (issue, action impact) and we have Level 5 & 6 Relationships (trusted advisor) with the decision maker then we don’t have to negotiate or sell on price.

The problem is that most sales people won’t work hard enough and learn how to make that equation a reality in their business so they default to price!

Overall I find that price slowly ticks down the priority list the more value the client sees in going with the Cadillac vs. the Yugo. I just try to point out all the pitfalls and pains of owning the Yugo.

Russ

Through using rapport-building tools properly (such as verbal and non-verbal communication in-line with how your prospect thinks and feels), you are better able to get to the core of what they really want and need. Then, you are closer to the prospect feeling comfortable enough to buy.

Ten years ago I did a study to see what were the 3 major objections our customers were having with the sales teams involved in selling our products/services.

Close to two thousand objections were sliced and diced and fell into the following 3 buckets: Performance, Value, and Credibility (PVC).

When all the numbers were crunched over 73% of customer objections accounted for Performance (52%), Value (14%) and Credibility (7%) issues. Price only accounted for 27% of our customer’s objections. However, if you talked to our sales teams they would have said that price accounted for over 50% of the objections. We were surprised by what the data was telling us.

As has been said, price will always be a factor in selling. But, how big a factor will depend on where you stack up in the areas of performance, value, and credibility. These issues are not just sales issues.

In our case, we went back and focused on our performance and value issues immediately. We worked with product and service realization teams and made changes; retooled our selling message to the customer and made sure that there were “credible” reframes to the top 4 PVC+Price objections.

Over the next 8 quarters the sales team’s complaints about pricing (and discounting) grew less and less especially as they became more confident in their ability to deal with the major PVC issues.

In most businesses you can prepare a list of “concessions” you can offer in lieu of pricing discounts – rush delivery, an add-on option, better financing or payment terms.

Its usually more pofitable to offer these types of concessions that to discount the price.

For a complex sales, learn how to align your solution to your customer business performance, know why they want to buy and articulate a business impact based value proposition is key and not price.