During a sales presentation, one of my colleagues made the statement if you are telling you aint selling. These wise words started me thinking about selling from an entirely different perspective.

When sales people stop telling and start listening, they can begin to separate the suspects from the prospects. Depending upon your sales cycle (the time from the first contact to the actual closing of the sale), removing wasted time is another benefit when changing your approach to double your sales results.

Now that you know you have a prospect (someone who has a need) you can sharpen your listening skills to hear what is not being said. As you ask open ended questions and probe for your prospect to begin to share all of his or her challenges (what some sales experts call pain), you are actually facilitating a dialogue where you are building a relationship. During this rapport building conversation, the focus is on the prospect and off your services or products.

As the conversation continues and this may be over the course of several meetings, your goal is to demonstrate the measurable results that you bring to the table not the products or services that you are selling. Remember, there are at least 100 people standing on the same corner, wearing the same clothes and selling the same stuff. So if you take the traditional approach to selling by telling, you are now even more like everyone else.

By changing your belief and focusing on the results that you deliver for your clients, you have made yourself stand out away from the crowd. As the old adage goes, No one likes to be sold, but everyone loves to buy works with this new sales belief. Maybe its time to listen to Madison Avenue from Its so clean it squeaks to Finger licking good and start looking at the results instead of your product or service.

Copyright 2005(c) Leanne Hoagland-Smith, M.S.

This article may be freely published. Permission to publish this article, electronically or in print, as long as the bylines are included, with a live link, and the article is not changed in any way (grammatical corrections accepted).

Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Good Day. Thanks for visiting. I hope that you have enjoyed my articles. In 1999, I founded ADVANCED SYSTEMS because I saw that performance could and should be doubled in warp time. Individuals, small and large businesses could not afford expensive solutions that may or may not deliver improved results in 12 months.

From my corporate, small business and education experiences, I recognized the individuals must have opportunities for connecting their passion to their purpose to secure the desired performance results, but many lacked the necessary skills, strategies and tools.

With over 20 years in sales management and 10 years in education, I understand how to unite productivity with profitability by developing a proactive working culture. My previous experiences resulted in cost savings through one of the first implementations of a computer software in a wholesaler distributor to the creation of a vendor performance assessment.

Since facilitating over 500 sessions, developing and editing over 25 training programs and writing numerous articles focusing on performance improvement, I bring a results focused approach to my clients. Also, I am proud to be one of the first five nationally certified facilitators of America?s Rising Stars (a Student Leadership developmental curriculum).

My passion is to help others connect their passion to their purpose to double performance. As The small business coach in Chicago, my clients have easily doubled their performance. Since our greatest resource is our young people, I am now working with large urban schools to generate the same results.

Education Background

• Graduated with honors from Purdue University with a B.A. in Education
• Earned M.S. from Purdue University in Instructional Design and Curriculum
• Published in the national trade journal, The Supply House Times, and numerous national newsletters
• Developed seminars and training on diversity, communication, leadership, sales, effective trade show behavior, networking, knowledge management, goal setting and improved educational outcomes
• Co-authored M.A.G.I.C.A.L. Potential: 7 Capicities for Living an Amazing Life Beyond Purpose to Achievement, to be available in 2006
• Working a another book focusing on performance in public education
• Speaker in a national bureau - Resource Associates Corporation