Top 5 Interesting Sales Tips

Guest post by: Dave Kurlan
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Personality Tests, Sales Candidate Selection - How Tests Measure Up - By Dave Kurlan

Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.

My mother-in-law of nearly 20 years has strong opinions. Whenever she is shown something, told about something, or experiences something, one of her possible reactions is, "That's interesting."

When your salespeople explain your technology, methods, positioning, value added, warranty, or product differentiation to their prospects, and the prospects respond with "Interesting!"...what do your salespeople do?

Depending on the context of the conversation, weather, personality and the frame of reference of their prospect, here are the top five things that "Interesting" could mean:

This is the greatest thing since sliced bread!
This is so much better than what I've seen elsewhere.
This is interesting - I'd like to learn more to better understand it.
These guys might be on to something.
I hate this but I don't want to hurt their feelings.

It took me about 5 years before I understood my mother-in-law and her use of "Interesting." Turns out she only used it when she was thinking #5! But she isn't necessarily representative of anyone else. There is truly no way of knowing which of the 5 things they mean when they say, "Interesting" and I''ll bet that I hear "Interesting" at least once per day from someone....

I'll share what I do when I hear that...

I ask, "Can you help me out? You just said this concept was "Interesting". I'm not exactly sure what you mean. I know that when my mother-in-law says "interesting" she means she hates it...what do you mean?"

If you want to make sure that your salespeople don't fall victim to happy ears, make sure that they clarify the use of words that can have multiple meanings, words that are vague and can be easily interpreted the wrong way.

On another subject, The Ceremony for this Thursday's (December 16, 2010) Top Sales Awards will take place from Noon ET - 3 PM ET. if you would like to attend this online event, you can registerhere. Awards will be presented for:

Top Sales Article
Top Sales Star
Top Sales Book
Top Sales Blog (My Blog is in 2nd place in the popular vote which is worth 9 pts. The judges in this category will award up to 10 points for their choices and a winner will be determined on Thursday)
Top Sales Resource
Top CRM Solution
Top Sales Tool
Top Sales 2.0 Solution
Top Social Media Site
Top Sales Personality
Hall of Fame

You will also here from a number of top sales experts around the world as we share our opinions on dozens of important topics that face companies in the coming months and years.

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Free PDF Download
Personality Tests, Sales Candidate Selection - How Tests Measure Up - By Dave Kurlan

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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