According to Geoffrey James’ Sales Machine blog, it’s one of the ten best sales books of all time—it’s Tom Sant’s Persuasive Business Proposals and you can order it by clicking here.  For Dr. Tom’s fascinating study of the origins of the most important ideas in professional sales and the individuals who first came up with them, The Giants of Sales, please click here.  To improve your writing, take a look at Tom’s book, The Language of Success, which you can order here. 

My old friend and mentor, Dr Tom Sant posted a most revealing article this morning and I wanted to share it with you.

If you are not already an avid fan of Dr Tom Sant’s book as I am, this posting is an excellent example of his philosophy,
his marvelous way with words and his keen insights into what really works with customers.

Enjoy!

Jim

The November 2011 issue of the Harvard Business Review contains an interesting article about how Office Depot’s new CEO in the United States has retrained the staff to drive sales.  A text box headlined "What We Say Matters…" shows how employees have been taught to ask customers a different kind of question.  Specifically:

These are smart changes.  You can hear the difference immediately.  The questions in the right-hand column are purposeful and open-ended. They have the potential to lead to conversations about the customer’s needs. 

What I found most intriguing was how similar they are to recommendations Elmer Wheeler made 75 years ago.  Wheeler studied the interactions of sales associates at the May Company department stores with customers and found that most of them failed to ask meaningful questions.  (I wrote about Wheeler as one of the four people who invented modern sales methods in
The Giants of Sales. )

In Wheeler’s book, Tested Sentences That Sell, he provides numerous concrete examples of how to engage with customers more effectively.  He was focused more on retail environments like the May Company stores and Office Depot, but the logic behind his advice applies to any sales situation, including selling business-to-business and business-to-government.  His book became one of the all-time best selling sales training books and was followed by several more. 

Wheeler was engaged by a chain of five-and-dime stores called Schulte-United to increase sales of ice cream at their lunch counters.  Wheeler figured that there were thirty-six possible methods of asking a customer if he or she would care for some ice cream on his pie.

"Finally," he wrote, "we had the waitresses ask, ‘would you care for an order of vanilla or chocolate ice cream on your pie?” The mind of the customer would fluctuate between vanilla and chocolate, not between ice cream and no ice cream. Whichever he decided upon meant a happier customer—and a richer restaurant proprietor."

This is Wheeler’s principle, Ask Which—Not If.  By forcing the customer to make a choice between one thing and another, the salesperson is less likely to hear, "None for me, thanks."  It’s a bit crude, but it’s not too different from the Office Depot associate asking, "What else is on your shopping list today?"

Elmer Wheeler is long gone, but if you would like to rethink your sales and marketing messages, give us a call.  To paraphrase Elmer, we can help you put the sizzle back in your sales pitch. 

According to Geoffrey James’ Sales Machine blog, it’s one of the ten best sales books of all time—it’s Tom Sant’s Persuasive Business Proposals and you can order it by clicking here.  For Dr. Tom’s fascinating study of the origins of the most important ideas in professional sales and the individuals who first came up with them, The Giants of Sales, please click here.  To improve your writing, take a look at Tom’s book, The Language of Success, which you can order here. 

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