Sales: where do your sales tools come from?

© 2010-‐2013 Andrew Priestley | www.thesalesprofile.com www.andrewpriestley.com Priestley Coaching 1

Andrew Priestley A History of Sales Where do your sales techniques come from?

In this article

Award winning business coach, Andrew Priestley, provides an excellent insight into the way and

why we sell by looking into the recent past to see where contemporary selling strategies come

from. If you want to get to the bottom of why old-style selling feels so wrong, then you must read

this article, as it provides a great foundation for selling authentically.


Before we start

Sales training is a multi-billion dollar per annum industry. Its goal is to dramatically enhance the

performance of sales people in all industries. To gain a better understanding of how to benefit

from this, it’s worth asking the following questions:

• Where does this training come from?

• Does it work?

• How do you know? ��

This article focuses on more ‘complex’ sales such as high value, multi- step, face-to-face sales,

i.e. consulting, one-to-one services, real estate and advertising. Whilst much of what we cover

here overlaps with ‘simple’ impulse retail sales, the focus of this article will be on the more

relevant sales training history to sales professionals. ��

Andrew Priestley

Grad Dip Psych, B.Ed

October 2013


My first sales experience

When I was about 6 or 7 we lived at the back of a golf course and I used to fossick for golf balls

in the scrub and then sell them back to the golfers for sixpence. (That’s how old I am!) When I

was a little older – about 11 - I sold salt and pepper ornaments door-to-door.

When I was in my late 20s I formally learnt to sell when I sold prestige real estate.

I did a weeklong REIQ Fast Start Course (Real Estate Industry Queensland, Australia) for estate

agents; and then successful sat the Agents and Auctioneers exam. Most of the training focused on

the legal and compliance requirements for listing and selling property. The rest of the training

was on cold calling (listing properties), handling objections (presenting) and closing (contracts).

I even topped my class for the sales training and the exams.

Back at work we had a weekly sales training session and the emphasis was on listing, closing and

settling contracts.

I was told to read two books – one by Frank Bettger and the other by Tom Hopkins. Bettger was

probably the most successful life insurance salesman of his time in the 30s and 40s, and Tom

Hopkins sold real estate and became a millionaire by the age of 27 and then a high profiled

worldwide sales trainer and sales speaker in the 70s and 80s.

Frank Bettger’s How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling (1947) is old school and

somewhat dated in the examples, but still a fabulous book on human psychology and the skills of

prospecting and closing.

I loved Tom Hopkins’ The Art of Selling which was a fabulous resource because it armed you

with an amazing arsenal of sales weapons. It was like owning a bazooka.

But did all that input and training work?

The answer is: sometimes.

For me, it wasn’t consistent. I had topped my sales training course and was performing textbook

closes and yet people still didn’t buy. I investigated, I found explicit needs, I flushed out

objections – they wanted it, they needed it - and still they didn’t buy. So, if I received world-class

cutting edge training why weren’t people buying?

What wasn’t working for me … or at all?��


I honestly think I was on the tail end of an approach to sales that is darkly satirized in the movie

Glengarry Glenross. I was taught ABC – Always Be Closing. But two incidents changed my

approach to selling:

• I had a client who was desperate to sell. A buyer made a ridiculously low offer on the

property and I was required to present every offer to the client. I sought my sales

managers’ input and he insisted I had to ‘close’ the deal if I wanted a result on the sales

board that month. I ‘closed’ the deal and the house sold. In this case, the sales training

worked and I got paid a good commission … but I felt lousy.

• Another time I overheard a woman who walked

into the agency to enquire about property.

She told the agent on duty that her husband had

arthritis in the hips and that she was looking for a

single level dwelling on a flat block. The agent

drove her out to a two-story home on a sloping

block. Apparently after pulling up outside that property she asked to be driven back to the

agency. She left. The salesperson was angry at the woman but I realized that he was using

a textbook approach: show a few bad properties first to make the one you had in mind

seem so much better by contrast.

The first incident taught me to��

work for my real client – the vendor – and not for my sales manager and not for the

buyer.��

The second example taught me the importance of context and to

spend more time genuinely finding out what my customer actually wanted and why

BEFORE I pitched a solution.

If I honestly couldn’t help them I referred to agents who I thought could. And here’s the point:

Even though I began my sales career as textbook accurate my experience was terrible.

In contrast to the REIQ sales techniques, I was taught a bunch of industry-specific techniques

with the assurance that ‘this is what works and this is how you do it’.

Work for your real client

– not for your sales

manager and neither for

your buyer.


As an example, show the dogs. A prospect comes into the agency and you find out what they

want and then you show them two really crappy houses. The house you intended to show them –

by contrast – looks amazing. If it works – great. If it doesn’t it’s a tremendous time waster and

the prospect hates it.

It was easy to learn the techniques but I personally struggled to feel confident using them. And

some techniques I felt very uncomfortable and unethical using.

For a long time I believed that my success lay in mastering those techniques. Thankfully we’ve

moved on from this approach. (I hope.)

I knew people who these techniques worked for and placed them high on the leader boards but I

did not want to sell like them or be like them.

It became very important for me to understand where the selling tools being recommended came

from. Over time I distinguished between books about sales techniques and sales training

methodology; and sales research and sales theory.

Interest in Selling

From the perspective of sales strategies in the 21st

Century, the interest in effective sales and selling

techniques stem from the developments of the late 19th

and early 20th century.

Sales theory coincided with the advent of mass

production; the increase in disposable income; and banking.

Mass production - the ability to produce a lot more - increased the need to sell a lot more of what

was produced to an ever-increasing consumer market.

In ��the US the average annual income in 1900 was ��about $480 pa. Ten years later it was about��

$1500. (Check out Consumer Price Index and Inflation Calculators) but what had also increased

was disposable income.

The three industries most interested in advertising and selling were real estate, cars and

insurance. In the early 20th Century these industries invested heavily in discovering ways to

market, sell and make people buy their products. Around this time research into selling began.

Genuinely find out what your

customer wants and why

BEFORE you pitch a

solution.


Sales Research

Formal sales research only really began after 1898 and it coincided with the development of

applied psychology and research into human behavior. Believe it or not, sales research actually

peaked in the 1920s. Of course there has been consistent sales research over the last 90 years but

most of it confirms what was clearly identified in the early 1920s.

Sales Theory

The research was intended to discover a theory of selling: why people buy; and how to make

people buy.

One key sales theory was the Hierarchy of Effects that has influenced sales training for over 70

years. It suggests that there is a hierarchy to buying and that it occurs in a predictable sequence.

Success lies in understanding that behavior and sequence.

Attention Interest Desire Action (AIDA) was first proposed in 1898 by E St Elmo Lewis was

influenced by the Hierarchy of Effects. It suggests that if you attract attention, and build interest

and desire the customer will take action and purchase.

AIDA was not a theory of selling. It was actually a copywriting technique used in print

advertising. It was never intended for personal selling but somehow it was lifted across to sales

and is still taught as a personal selling system.

Most people don’t have a theory of selling that makes sense. What they have is a grab bag of

techniques.

The research conducted in the 1920s set out to discover if those techniques worked. A lot of that

research was funded by the real estate, automotive and insurance industries and found it’s way

into books.

Sales Books

Books on selling only started appearing in the late 1880s. The books were initially a collection of

sales tips and techniques. John Patterson (Gitomer, 2004) is credited as being the father of

American salesmanship. He sold cash registers. He wrote a book in 1887 called How I sell

National cash registers (1887) and he identified a four-phase sequence - essentially a sales

process:


• Approaching a customer

• Demonstrating

• Objections

• Closing

Sales Training

Patterson provided training to match each stage in the process – and we still pretty much have

this training framework with us today. Jeffery Gitomer (2004), somewhat of an expert in

Patterson, has called this the traditional selling system.

However it has been repackaged and rebranded, essentially most high value sales follow

Patterson’s model. There are some sales systems that are deemed non-traditional, i.e. David

Sandler, but in my opinion they have added to, subtracted from or altered the sequence.

In any case, Patterson had suggested sales is a predictable sequence of observable and measurable

elements and a set of trainable skills that result in a sale.

There were a large number of books on selling published from 1920 onwards.

The Sales Trail

In 1922, Frank Bettger started training as an insurance salesman. Frank Bettger wrote the best

seller How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling in 1947.

The need for sale training snowballed in the 1950s after the Second World War with the advent

of the baby boom and the manufacturing boom. Sales training became a legitimate industry in its

own right in the 1950 and 1960s (as too, did the advertising industry).

Tom Hopkins started working in real estate in the 1960s and wrote The Art of Selling in 1982.

Hopkins had been trained in techniques he learned from his mentors in the 1960s and 70s … and

they learned from theirs from mentors in the 1950s.

When I learned to sell real estate both of these books were recommended reading.

Once you start looking at a lot of sales books in chronological order, and following their

references backwards, you end up in the 1920s. It seems sales theory taught in the 1970s and 80s


was based on the sales theory of the 1940s and 1950s …

… which was based on the sales research developed in the 1920s. The question is: was that

original research correct? We come to this soon.

From 1960-1975 in America and Australia the aluminum siding/cladding salesmen epitomized

everything that was dirty, rotten and underhanded

about selling largely because of Hire Purchase and

Credit Finance.

Basically, a salesman could legally stitch up a client

for thousands of dollars of debt without them

realizing. Loads of people lost their homes. The real

sale became the finance package and the trail commissions or finance load ups.

It got so bad that the industry was regulated. Other industries that used HP finance: real estate,

cars sales and insurance industries were also regulated. The question was: who taught you to sell

like that?

Meta-‐analysis

In 1998, I read a range of research papers and conducted a meta-analysis of 12 very popular

selling systems (see Appendix). It became obvious that success in selling does not come down to

just one behavior.

The literature reinforces the idea that there is a sequence of sales skills and infers success occurs

if you use techniques at the appropriate time in the appropriate order. For example: try to close

the sale before you demonstrate your product. This doesn’t work.

The literature was a false silver lining in an overcast sky.

Photocopying

The biggest tussle of the 1970s was between Xerox and IBM who had dominated the

photocopying industry. Interestingly, the sales training of the day was not resulting in significant

The sales techniques you and

I were taught as cutting edge

actually reverse as the value

of the sale


market share so both IBM and Xerox commissioned separate studies into sales training.

One landmark study that stands out is Neil Rackham’s SPIN Selling/Huthwaite (1986). SPIN

focuses on what sales people do in the process of a sale.

Over a period of 12 years, Rackham researched over 35000 high value sales calls on five

continents.

His key observation is that the many of the sales techniques deemed cutting edge actually reverse

as the value of the sale increases. This is because as the value increases, so does the perception of

risk (and in this case the perception that risk equals the wastage or loss of money).

What makes Rackham so interesting is he actually explored the origin of most sales techniques.

Importantly, he was able to trace most of modern sales techniques back to research conducted by

Dr E K Strong Junior at Colombia and then Stanford University in the early 1920s.

Dr E K Strong

Dr Edward Kellogg Strong Junior was an applied psychologist and he is famous for the Strong

Interest Inventory (1927): an occupational assessment tool and still the world’s benchmark tool

over 70 years later. Strong’s interest in analysis is so scholarly and extensive that it is impossible

to do anything in the field that does not have some basis in Strong’s research.

For a very short time in the early 1920s, Strong worked at the Colombia University on sales and

advertising. He also joined the faculty of the newly started Graduate School of Business at

Stanford and wrote several books on sales and advertising.

His methodology appears to have been a meta-analysis of available sales literature: observing and

analyzing sales people, and identifying their key behaviors.

His findings appeared in The Psychology of Selling (1925) and The Psychology of Selling and

Advertising (1927) and The Psychology of Selling Life Insurance (1927) and the Psychology of

Business (1938).

Strong is often credited with coming up with AIDA (1925) but AIDA was in fact first put

forward by E St Elmo Lewis in 1898. AIDA has evolved into Attention, Interest, Desire,

Conviction, Action (Clyde Bedell 1940). (Barry & Howard 1990).

Strong was an advocate of the Hierarchy of Effects: cognitive (Think) – affective (Feel) –


conative (Act) so it made sense to tailor his observations in accordance with that theory.

A criticism of AIDA is that it doesn’t provide a good definition of cognitive (thinking, intellect)

and affect (feelings); whether knowing and feeling actually lead to doing; and that they are in fact

sequential.

You should note that Strong actually revised many of his earlier findings (1927). For example,

high pressure selling does not work for high value sales. Notably his earlier enthusiasm for AIDA

waned. AIDA is still taught as a frontline sales technique today.

My only guess is that the industries that sponsored his initial research had in the meantime

invested in sales training and published materials and simply were not happy to write-off all that

effort. I am guessing that it worked enough of the time to result in the decision to let it stand.

What did Strong identify?

Strong wasn’t the only researcher but he is the principal one cited in Rackham’s research. Strong

is also credited with:

• Closing techniques (Always Be Closing).

• Sales is a number game

• Start at the top

• Ask open/closed questions

• Rapport building skills

• Handle objections ��

Strong also identified:

• There are implicit and explicit needs for why people buy. Top sellers focus on identifying

and investigating a buyer’s explicit needs; poor sellers focus on what they guess or

assume the customer wants – implicit needs. It therefore takes time and effort to

investigate needs. That hasn’t changed.

• Success is linked to meeting buyer and seller goals. These should be: ��

• i. explicit��


• ii. commonly agreed

• ��iii. unequivocal��

• iv. specific(sales, purchasing, advertising) objectives ��

• v. calibrated��

• vi. testable... rather than implied, unilateral, subjective, ad hoc, ��and untested.

• Strong identified a buyer focus and a seller focus. Strong assumed that the sales was in

the control of the seller.

Was he right?

Three key studies are worth mentioning.

Rackham (1986) agreed with Strong that top sellers focus on the buyer’s explicit needs and poor

sellers focus on the seller’s implicit needs. Rackham’s research showed Strong’s techniques

worked if it was a low value/low risk sale. Bear in mind that in 1920 a high value sale was

considered to be over $99.

Buy Rackham showed that as the value of the sale increases using sales techniques suggested by

Strong were more likely to ‘un-sell’ a customer. And Rackham showed that many of the

techniques we still embrace are unsupported.

As an example, rapport building. Rackham showed that much of what is taught as useful rapport

building actually turns a customer off. Rackham gives the example of a manufacturer who saw

three salespeople in a day who all tried to curry favor by initiating a conversation about his

golfing trophies.

Robert Jolles (1998) approached selling from the direction of what the buyer is doing. His study

resulted in the book Customer Focused Selling which unpacks the decision making cycle that all

buyers confront. ��Jolles helped explain why even though people want something ... need it ...

understand the benefit ... and can see it will work, they will still not purchase, irrespective of the

skill of the salesperson. ��

Dr Michael Hewitt-Gleeson (1990) emphasized that the decision to buy is actually a chemical

reaction in the customer’s head which the salesperson has no control over. His book NewSell

(1990) focused only on what a seller could control.


OK, so what’s wrong with Strong?

The issue is not about techniques but whether the techniques

work because of the theory that underpins his findings. The

jury is still out on the Hierarchy of Effects theory. Strong

didn’t�� account for:

• The effect the value of the sale plays in making a

purchase decision i.e., high value sales.

• Differentiation between value and cost.

• Strong did identify the importance of discovering

explicit needs; however he did not focus on how to build real value for services:

“What they don’t realize is that if��they want to make a million��dollars, they have to

give people a million dollars worth of value in exchange.” Glen Carlson

• He identified the need to intensify the conviction for purchasing but not the motivation to

proceed. The insurance industry �� borrowed from his principles of pain driven conviction

(i.e., – Relax, Disturb, Relive, Close). Most recently NLP has explored towards and away

from buying motivations.

Rackham challenged many of Strong’s findings. For example, there is no research to support the

effectiveness of the ABC (Always Be Closing) technique.

Many buying responses presuppose the interaction of other elements not specified in the research.

• ‘Increase awareness’ and ‘awareness’ are perhaps the most commonly encountered of all

sales and advertising objectives but they are

largely un-testable because they do not specify

how the increase in awareness is measured or if

awareness was the motivating catalyst or factor.

• The research did not qualify what a ‘high’ price

was; or what factors other than the role an increasing price/value play in buyer

Remember: top sellers

focus on investigating and

identifying a buyer’s

explicit needs; poor

sellers focus on what they

guess or assume the

customer wants.

Strong desire and/ or

conviction to purchase do

not lead to a purchase.


psychology. We now know that higher price/value is linked to a higher sense of risk – so

the higher the��price the more risky the purchase feels. Rackham proved that many of

the��‘techniques’ put forward by Strong��reverse as the price increases (i.e.,�� impulse buying,

closing techniques,�� handling objections).

• There is NO research that supports the idea that strong desire or conviction to purchase

actually leads to a purchase. ��

Other variables missed in the research

• Simple (one-step) / complex sales (multiple-steps)

• Length of sales cycle – lead times versus pressures to close; a ��decision now or later and

what happens in the intervals between

• Perceived value – articulated value, the ability to articulate explicit value and match

explicit needs

• Relationships – ongoing, referrals etc.

• Customer sophistication

• The pre-sales tendering process – preventative maintenance to mining industry, tendering

process

• Needs analysis/feasibility – needs can take longer to ascertain than expected

• Other non-sales contact variables – for example, recent economic downturn, not knowing

the administration cycle etc.

• The role that high finance plays in the decision i.e., loans, leases.

• The role after-sales warranties play.

• Strong’s research of what occurs during a sale and not what precedes or follows it. ��

One can argue that Strong has simply catalogued the steps that are observed in successful sales

that closed, rather than steps that guarantee a sale WILL close. Strong published his findings in

respected journals and in how-to-sell books. ��

The Psychology of Selling Life Insurance (1927) is interesting reading, however it is

claustrophobic in its prescription of how to build conviction and has all the hallmarks of what we


would now say is high pressure selling. Some of the techniques almost feel like the customer

was being corralled into a sale.


What’s common to all sales?

All high value sales tend to follow Patterson’s (1887) sequence:

• Opening – rapport building skills (misunderstanding of rapport)

• Investigate needs – open/closed questions, implicit/explicit needs

• Benefits – (or Features Advantages Benefits, FAB) Confusion, based on implicit or

explicit needs

• Objections – handling or prevention? Tie downs.

• Closing techniques – trial closes, assumptive closes, alternative ��closes, either/or closes. ��

Strong’s research covers the behaviors that occur during a sale. Strong omitted the steps and their

impact that occurs before (i.e., sales training, competitor analysis) and after a sale (i.e., post

purchase reassurance). ��It is unlikely that we will discover any new sequence. But we now know

that we need to refine what we do in that sequence to authentically meet the needs of our

products, markets and customers. ��

The Sales Skill Profile

Based on the meta-analysis of sales the following sequence has been identified:

Pre-sale

• Readiness

• Knowledge

• Prospecting

During the sale

• Rapport

• Investigating, Qualifying

• Presenting

• Objections

• Closing


Post Sale

• Servicing

• Administration

Sales Process/Systems

The analysis concluded that while there is a general robust sales sequence for most high value

sales different sales systems might use more or less of the individual skills.

It isn’t enough to train people in selling skills. Those skills need to me matched to the typical

sales process for that business.

If sales people understand the sequence as it applies to their business and industry, sales results

would improve. It is important therefore to carefully map your sales system and to tailor the sales

skills to (their) specific context.

I am also finding that higher sales’ targets can be reached when we train people in how their

sales’ system works from both the customer and the buyer’s perspectives.

Drivers

Proficiency in the above skill areas can be affected by three drivers:

• Attitude

• Drive

• Communication skills

It is possible to be quite skilled – technically – and yet still underperform if you have a poor

attitude and a low drive to succeed in sales.


Summary

Sales techniques were gathered as early as the 1880s and research began to be formally codified

in the 1900s and peaked in the 1920s. Subsequent research has basically confirmed or tweaked

existing findings.

You were probably taught ideas that were originally codified in the 1920s - notably by E K

Strong - that are assumed to work. The reality is most people have no idea where their sales ideas

and theory come from; and as we are discovering may not work under all circumstances or any!

The SPIN Selling studies explored many of Strong’s findings and found important contradictory

distinctions:

• Sales value changes buyer behavior significantly.

• Many of the ideas do not work under certain conditions.

• There is a sequence to high value sales that should be ��incorporated into a total sales

system.

• There is a link between sales skills and attitude. Skilled people with poor attitudes can be

out sold by poorly skilled people with great attitudes.

By understanding this history of sales we have the opportunity observe and measure the value

and effectiveness of certain strategies which we may have long assumed work.

Skills, attitudes and sequence strengths can be tested and should be tested.

Sales skills should be tailored to sales systems; and the bespoke customer context for your

business or industry. All sales techniques utilized should be ethically applied and meet

compliance with the customer.

The sales techniques people have learnt are certainly accurate - and as the research shows we

probably won't find anything new.

Even social media sales techniques are an extension of relationship selling - high rapport - Know

Me, Like Me, Follow Me (Penny Power).

SPIN Selling and Customer Focused Selling (CFS) focuses on using ANY tools appropriately.

Going forward most sales people should focus on designing a sales system and training in

appropriate skills i.e., No objections selling has also been around a long time, it was one of the

first sales systems.


When I was taught how to sell we lifted the techniques straight out of the book and were told to

apply them. This still happens.

Finally …

My Way

The lady with the arthritic hips taught me to modify the tools of rapport, qualifying and

investigating.

By contrast, I invited customers to have a pleasant sit-down discovery chat BEFORE we looked

at any property. My sales manager was angry and felt I should have been bundling clients into the

car as soon as possible. “You won’t sell anything over a cup of tea!”

He thought I was stupid until it began to work.

Where are you now?

I asked where my client was living currently, and why they wanted to move. In essence what

were they trying to get away from?

Where are you now?

We spent time discussing what they wanted instead. I know people who have bought an amazing

house in the wrong area. As example, the house you fall in love with might not be conveniently

located to schools or shops. I once advised a couple from buying a block on a canal who had four

school aged children because I knew that it involved a 5-kilometre drive each way, twice a day.

The school was close as the crow flies, but it was on the other side of the canal! My sales

manager thought I was nuts, but that family bought a home that was better suited for many more

reasons than a nice looking house.

What’s stopping you?

I look at what is stopping you because sometimes there are legitimate reasons for why a sale

cannot proceed. For example, you cannot get finance.


What needs to happen in order to …?

I spend time on what needs to happen in order to move into this property and that question is

useful for you and the client. It usually identifies a list of things that are very useful in helping a

client decide to purchase … or not. It can be applied to most sales situations.

My sales manager said it was not my role to help the client evaluate the sales obstacles … only

the sales facilitators. I was taught to make a list and help the client determine all the reasons for

buying and give no help for the reasons why they shouldn’t. Then whatever they came up with

handle them as objections.

What happened … long term?

(Short term my income was stretched and things were tight.) Long term I got a reputation as a

good salesperson to talk to about buying a house. A lot of the people I invested time with did not

buy anything. But they referred.

One big question with a high value purchase is: Is there something better out there? In real estate

is the house of my dreams around the corner! By being thorough I could tell someone the house

of there dreams was or wasn’t available. And if I knew where it might be I would refer to caring

providers.

The result was years after I had left real estate I still had people seeking me out to buy a house!

The key to success

There is no one key to success, really. I found that high value sales follow a predictable sequence.

And they require a predictable skill set. That’s why I created the Sales Profile. It rates your

strengths in selling and you can then match that to your sales process with greater clarity. The

Sales Profile shows you where you need to improve, and where your sales process needs

tweaking.


The Sales Profile

The Sales Profile is a 50-item questionnaire designed to rate your competency in 13 sales skills

linked to success in a high value sale. Respondents complete a questionnaire and receive a

comprehensive and personalized 20-page report.

It clearly and easily identifies areas for training. In the above diagram there is a horizontal pink

zone around the 70% mark. If the vertical bars are inside that pink zone then you have a good set

of sales skills. If the bars are outside that pink zone – high or low – they are sales training targets.

As an example the above person needs help with Prospecting (if Prospecting is required as an

integral part of his role.)

It is also used in conjunction with matching skills to your typical sales process.

Finally, it is useful in deciding how to measure performance in a sales function.

You can access the sales profile at www.thesalesprofile.com


Further Reading

Bettger, Frank (1947). How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling.

Hopkins, Tom (1983) The Art of Selling.

Jolles, Robert (1992) Customer Focused Selling

Rackham, Neil (1985) SPIN Selling.

Underhill, Pace (1996) Why we buy?

Sales: where do your sales tools come from?

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