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Philosophy of Selling
 Selling is about the prospect’s needs not about you or your products. A good salesperson’s job is
to focus on the changes within a company that cause those needs and to find ways that you can
satisfy them. Unfortunately, no matter how well intentioned your staff might be, without the right
diagnostic skills to uncover changes, translate those into recommendations and present solutions
that satisfy those needs, your people will fail more often than not. The hard truth is that
discovering the right product to sell is trivial. Almost anyone can do that. The real challenge lies
in discovering the exact benefits that excite the prospect, and making him or her feel the pain of
not having those benefits. When the prospect feels the pain, they will want the solution.
While most sales people can list a service or product’s potential benefits, they may not be
sufficiently adept in questioning technique to discover what those benefits mean to the prospect
company. They don’t translate words into real life. And, they generally try to close a sale as soon
as they identify a product opportunity. In truth, their real sales work should just be beginning.
The result of trying to close too soon is a lot of revenue left on the table and companies left
without the best solutions to their problems.
The place to start working with a prospect is to identify the changes they are experiencing, then
move through the potential impacts noting opportunities and thinking about product linkages.
The Marks & Associates Sales Model, illustrated, succeeds because it forces your sales staff
to consider change, emphasize benefits and close at the appropriate time.
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