Duane Sparks - Articles

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The Sales Training Series: Selling With TFBRs
You have asked great questions and uncovered important customer needs that your offerings can address. Know what you're going to do now? If you're like most salespeople, you're going to lose all of the momentum you've built and maybe the sale, by launching a boring, standardized product feature presentation. People don't buy product features. They buy solutions to their own needs. Read
By: Duane Sparks | 22/04/2006 | Sales
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The Sales Training Series: Keep Selling Your Company
If you hear words like "I didn't know that!" from an existing customer who likes and trusts you but who just bought something from one of your competitors, you have no one but yourself to blame. It was you who blew the opportunity and left the door wide open to the competition. Read
By: Duane Sparks | 22/04/2006 | Sales
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50

The Sales Training Series: Dealing With Sales Objections and Stalls
Most salespeople think of "stalls" and "objections" as synonyms. Wrong. Stalls and objections are both things you may hear after you have asked for commitment, but an objection is a specific reason not to buy. In a stall—"I need to think about it"—the Read
By: Duane Sparks | 13/02/2006 | Sales
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The Sales Training Series: Stopping Objections Before They Start
"Your price is too high." "We're loyal to our current supplier." "I prefer your competitor's product." Classic objections such as those are very hard to overcome when they pop up near the end of your sales call after you have presented your company and Read
By: Duane Sparks | 28/01/2006 | Business
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The Sales Training Series: Sell By Agreeing On At Least 3 Needs
Salespeople know that they're supposed to sell to the customer's needs. Here is the classic—and tragically wrong—way they usually learn to do it: Uncover the first need. Begin a product presentation, covering features and benefits, and then attempt to un Read
By: Duane Sparks | 27/01/2006 | Sales
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The Sales Training Series: Gaining Commitment
Employers value salespeople based on their ability to Gain a Sales Commitment. Improving this sales skill has never been more important than it is today. So, what are you doing to get better? Read
By: Duane Sparks | 27/01/2006 | Sales
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The Sales Training Series: Selling With Leverage Questions
If he had a long enough lever and a place to put the fulcrum, the Greek mathematician Archimedes said, he could move the world. "Leverage questions" offer that kind of power to salespeople. These are open-ended questions designed to uncover the hot-butt Read
By: Duane Sparks | 27/01/2006 | Sales
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52

The Sales Training Series: Five Buying Decisions
Have you ever had a customer that seemed to reject nearly everything that you were presenting? We all have. Research on the customer's buying decisions has revealed that a customer's resistance may not be caused by what you present. It could be the seq Read
By: Duane Sparks | 15/01/2006 | Sales
Popularity
50

The Sales Training Series: Selling With A Better Strategy
In prospecting, your objective most often is to persuade a new customer to agree to meet with you face-to-face. To gain that commitment, you must convince the prospect that you are someone worth meeting. Every customer's first major buying decision is w Read
By: Duane Sparks | 15/01/2006 | Sales
Popularity
50

The Sales Training Series: Buying The Salesperson
In any major sale, a prospect makes a predictable series of buying decisions that lead up to the final purchasing decision. The first and most important of these is: "Do I 'buy' the salesperson?" This decision is always made before the prospect will ser Read
By: Duane Sparks | 15/01/2006 | Sales