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Highly Successful Salespeople Can't Remember What They Say

Guest post by: Dave Kurlan

Article Overview: We were in an internal meeting last week and Frank Belzer said something really profound. Chris Mott asked him to repeat it and he said, "I have no idea what I just said." Light Bulb.

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Highly Successful Salespeople Can't Remember What They Say

We were in an internal meeting last week and Frank Belzer said something really profound. Chris Mott asked him to repeat it and he said, "I have no idea what I just said."

Light Bulb.

Chris and I can't remember most of the most magical, profound, insightful things that we say, whether they occur in sales calls, training environments or consulting scenarios. The ideas come to us through intuition, they're based on experience and they're typically game changing, life changing, business changing or paradigm shifting insights.

Why can't we remember them?

We don't remember these memorable sound bites because we didn't prepare them, haven't said them before, and weren't paying much attention to what was coming out of our own mouths. We're focused on the other individual(s) in the room. We're in the moment, with clear minds. occurrences like these happen often for us and for other highly successful individuals. When you are in the moment, your own idle thoughts, strategies, tactics, next steps and scripts block great ideas from coming through. Most unsuccessful salespeople aren't able to engage and persuade resistant prospects. They're too busy reciting their prepared objection handling scripts which, to their prospects, sound like high pressured sales pitches.

Instructions to Your Salespeople: Clear your minds. You know enough and have prepared enough to succeed. Focus only on what your prospect is saying in that moment and question everything they say. Ask lots of "why" and "how" questions to identify compelling reasons for them to spend money with you and only you. Refer to the sample dialog in this post from last week as an example.

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Home > Sales > Dave Kurlan > Highly Successful Salespeople Cant Remember What They Say
Article Tags: belzer, dialog, environments, insights, intuition, light bulb, money, mott, mouths, objection handling, occurrences, paradigm, prospects, sales pitches, salespeople, scenarios, scripts, sound bites

About the Author: Dave Kurlan
RSS for Dave's articles - Visit Dave's website

Dave Kurlan is a best-selling author, top-rated speaker and thought leader on sales development.  He is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling (Dan Seidman), Stepping Stones (Deepak Chopra and Brian Tracey) and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2 (David Riklan).

Click here to visit Dave's website
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