How To Influence and Persuade People

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Forget devious sales tricks, closing techniques, and superficial rapport building. Rackhams behaviorally researched approach relies on finding out what the issues facing the customer are. Crucially effective sales people avoid 'situation' questions which gather factual but useless about the customer and their business. By paying attention to customer problems the implications for not solving them SPIN selling is a powerful methodology for securing sales.


SPIN selling
Huthwaite Sales Training
Changing Minds review
Neil Rackham

A structured method of prospecting and account profiling that improves your ability to find and sell into customers who are most likely to buy from you.


The New Strategic Selling
Miller Heimann

One of the most common mistakes that people make when they sell anything is that they don't have a grasp of its value. Pick up any of the better marketing texts (not those airport lounge skim readers) and you will learn that deeply understanding the notion of value is crucial to the reasons why people buy and use anything

Coming up with a persuasive and compelling Value Proposition isn't as simple as you might first think. Frequently people simply list the features of a product or service as if the reason for their 'value' is self evident. Often it isn't and often the features tend to be a list of what the seller likes about their product or assumes is important to the buyer. Value is a perception of the buyer. It is relates to the perceived benefits minus the total costs of acqusition which is not just the financial cost but the hassle factors too.

Understanding benefits is the path to articulating value. Benefits are what something does for someone, the solution to a need they have. It is not what the product or service is. An example of this line of thinking is the cosmetic company CEO who once said "In the Factory we make cosmetics in the store we sell hope. One of the first people to come up with a model of explaining value was Ted Levitt He explained that we can think of a value proposition in terms of 'levels'. i) the core product - its basic features, ii) the expected product - what you would expect as a bare minimum to put on the shopping list and the iii) augmented product. This last 'zone' is where differences that make a difference are found. This is where added value can be found. This is where sales are won and lost.

There is also a distinction to be made between 'advantages' and 'benefits', the former is aspects of the product and service that the seller 'assumes' is going to be good for the customer, the latter are true values that the buyer is really seeking. Benefits can only be found out by probing the customer about the challenges they have and what the implications are for not solving them.

On a personal level, imagine you are in a job interview. You have to do a presentation. The un-thinking approach would be to perhaps list qualifications and exprience (core / features), slightly better you might explain your transferable skills, such as team work, IT skills etc (expected / advantages), ideally you will have been able to talk with the prospective employer and uncover the reasons for creating the post, it is against these that you could present some benefits (additional safe pair of hands, track record for winning business, specialised knowledge that speeds up the company getting into a technology or market)

There is a great story about a man whose central heating was on the blink so he called plumber. The plumber arrived and after the customer explained where the boiler was he went to it and hit it with a hammer. In an instant the heating problem was sorted. The customer was delighted an the plumber left after spending 10 minutes on the premises. Send me your invoice called the exstatic customer.

The invoice arrived for $1000. The customer was astonished and called the plumber in a rage. "You were only here 10 mins and you simply hit the boiler with a hammer! send me a new invoice that reflects this!"

The new invoice duly arrived. It said - 'For attending premises and hitting boiler with a hammer $1...for knowing where to hit and how hard $999'

I rest my case.