Andrew Wall

The STORY:
Bob finished the presentation, turned off the overhead projector, and turned up the lights. The prospect was broadly smiling. Bob knew this one was a done deal. Piece of cake, he thought.

Think about the last time a complete stranger called you on the telephone or walked into your place of business and started selling their product or service.

How did that make you feel?

The STORY:
Nick was climbing the wall because he could not figure out how to close the prospect. The prospect had spent the last hour with Nick and appeared to want to buy. But he didn’t know what to do. If only he could remember what the experienced salespeople had told him to do.

Have you ever gone out shopping for something and run into a salesperson who was a little too eager to show you exactly what you were looking for?

The STORY:
After making the best possible presentation and after spending most of the night before preparing an extensive written proposal, Tim waited with bated breath for the prospect to say “yes.” The silence in the office was broken only by the prospect leafing through the written proposal. Tim was tied in knots.

Jack, a new sales hire, was having lots of problems in initial meetings with his prospective buyers. Vera, his manager, sat in on a sales call with him to determine why Jack was closing so few of his prospects in what was supposed to be a one-call close, and why he was discounting so heavily whenever he did close a deal. The answer, she saw, lay in the way Jack conducted his sales interviews.

The STORY:
The appointment with the prospect that Tim spent two weeks getting was not going well. The prospect kept firing questions and Tim kept giving answers. The only problem was that Tim could not figure out if the answers were what the prospect wanted to hear.

Carlos was in a great mood. Forty minutes in, the meeting with his top prospect’s senior staff was going great. He was getting nothing but engagement, smiles, and positive body language from everyone around the table, including the CEO of the company. He knew what that meant. He was about to close his first big deal! The timing couldn’t have been better. Because this was a potentially major account, Carlos' manager Charlene was in attendance. Today, she would get to see him work his magic first hand.

The STORY:
I think of my first sales training course. A week before the course was to begin, our instructor had sent us a book that listed the 100 most common objections and the best 100 ways to overcome them. Being used to educational seminars, I assumed we would talk about them. Have a conversation. Discussion groups. That sort of thing. Was I in for a surprise.

Once upon a time, there was a young kid who graduated from high school, took a look at the help wanted ads, went out on a couple of interviews, and, within just a few days, landed his very first job. He was hired as a salesperson by one of those big box stores.