inluminent

I’m reading a book right now (actually I’ve read it, now I’m re-reading it) for tips on opening a sales call.

The book is SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham of Huthwaite, Inc. It’s a good book on making large sales, which is refreshing, as I’m selling larger solutions now than I have done in the past, and every bit of training or sales advice I’ve ever received or read has been focused on small sales.

So, on “opening a sales call” effectively their advice is basically:

1. Get down to business quickly
2. Don’t talk about solutions too soon
3. Concentrate on questions

A telling sentence from this chapter (Chapter 7) is this quote:

“Often, when I’ve been traveling with salespeople, I’ve noticed that they waste time before a call worrying about how they should open it when they could be using that time far more effectively to plan some questions instead.”

It’s also telling that in this 200 page book, only 8 pages (7 and 1/2 really) are dedicated to opening a sales call.

Yep, that’s exactly what I’m doing right now: worrying about how to open a call. Silly me.

So, now I’m off to plan some questions and make the cold-call.

Thanks Neil for keeping me on track, and look for more on this weblog about selling the big client/sale in the future as I learn more.