How I Did It: Creating a Sales Model That Consistently Works
by Christina Lee on November 5th, 2008
More than 37 years of working in the wholesale industry taught Gary Moore a number of strategies in closing sales. But even after less than a third of those years passed, he had already seen too many bad sales attempts but could not find one consistent, applicable solution.
One day in his Denver office, he began thinking about factors that complicate the sales process, then began scrawling on paper how all the key lessons he had learned summed up to one effective sales technique.
“Really, it came after seeing a bunch of sales attempts, and even some good ones — but I hadn’t seen anyone really codify it,” Moore said. “I wanted to really organize it in a way so that people could remember.”
Over 400 wholesale distributors outside of the material handling industry have since approved what was once just a “crude drawing,” in Moore’s words. His idea transformed into a sales model that he still teaches today, which became the basis of “Objective-Based Selling in Wholesale-Distribution: Four Keys to Selling More at Higher Gross Margins.”
The National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors published the latest version of his book last month, though the sales model itself has not changed much since its creation in 1990, Moore said. For more than ten years, Moore taught and received feedback of his lessons from other companies, before he began teaching full-time in 2006.
Overall, the Objective-Based Sales Model teaches salespeople to build a more personalized relationship with their customers. One key lesson Moore teaches salespeople is to ask open-ended questions, which should bring up a number of possibilities for a sale.
“The advantage to this is that it makes the salesman shut up and lets the customer talk — and then the customer will tell you how to sell them,” Moore said.
Based on what they learn of the customer, Moore then teaches salespeople to pass along a written proposal that provides a number of possible ways the company can serve the customer.
“Taking a product and jamming it into a customer’s throat is never really effective,” he said.
Before readers even delve into the Objective-Based Selling Model in Moore’s book, they should first come across a disclaimer: “This book respects selling as a profession and salespeople as professionals.”
“Like other professions, there is a body of knowledge that forms the structure of techniques and skills that are most effective,” Moore writes. “These are practiced in customized ways by individuals with differing levels of effectiveness, based on their knowledge, the unique talents they bring to the profession, their circumstances, their work ethic.”
For more information about Moore’s book, visit www.objectivebasedselling.net .