Neil Rackham's Suggested Sales Practices During Recession

Neil Rackham is known throughout the world as a speaker, writer and seminal thinker on sales and marketing issues. Three of his books have been on the New York Times best seller list and his works have been translated into over 50 languages. 

 

Neil first gained international recognition in the 1970s when he led the largest ever research study of successful selling and sales effectiveness. This massive project, supported by major multinationals including Xerox and IBM, involved a team of 30 researchers who studied 35,000 sales calls in over 20 countries. The research took 12 years at a cost, in today’s dollars, of $30 million. From the results of these studies he published the groundbreaking classic SPIN® Selling.

I had the opportunity to attend the latest Neil Rackham's workshop in Mumbai. The workshop is an eye opener for people who are not exposed to value selling. For professionals or consultants who have been working in the area of TOC way of selling, it is very heartning to see the common message coming from one of the Guru's of Sales. However, unlike TOC, SPIN does not assume creation of a Decisive Competitive Edge and relies primarily on intelligent questioning for finding out the pain.

In the workshop, Neil spoke about Sales Strategies for the recessionary times. I am reproducing the key points:

• Don't chase business you can't win. Focus ruthlessly on your best and biggest opportunities
• Make your prospect feel safe about doing business with you. So build relationships, ask buyers about their concerns and really listen to their issues
• Negotiate little and negotiate late. Premature negotiation looses sale
• Do not defend your existing business. Treat existing customers as new business opportunities and sell assertively. Attack is the best defence.