They include such things as the way you introduce yourself and how you begin the conversation.

Some people believe that the Preliminaries are much more important than the word suggests. I've been confidently told by a number of very successful sales- people that it's during the first 2 minutes of a call that the customer forms crucial initial impressions that will influence the rest of the sale. How important is this initial impact?


2. Investigating. Almost every sale involves finding something out by asking questions. You may be uncovering needs or getting a better understanding of your customers and their organizations.

As we'll see, this is much more than the simple collection of data. Investigating is the most important of all selling skills, and it's particularly crucial in larger sales. In Appendix A you'll find some case studies which show that the av- erage person in major-account selling can increase overall sales volume by more than 20 percent by developing improved Investigating skills.


3. Demonstrating Capability. In most calls you will need to demon- strate to customers that you've something worthwhile to offer. Most of us in larger sales are selling solutions to customer problems.

In the Demonstrating Capability stage of the call, you have to show customers that you have a solution and that it makes a worthwhile contribution to helping solve their problems.

Sometimes you demonstrate capability by a formal presentation, sometimes by actually showing your product in action, and sometimes by describing some potential benefits that you could provide. But however you do it, in almost every sales call you must convince your customer that you've something to offer.

There are some very effective ways to demonstrate capability in the major sale, but as we'll see in Chapter 5, some of the methods for Demonstrating Capability in smaller sales will no longer work for you as the size of the sale increases.

4. Obtaining Commitment. Finally, a successful sales call will end with some sort of commitment from the customer.

In smaller sales the commitment is usually in the form of a purchase, but in larger sales there may be a whole range of other commitments you have to obtain before you reach the order stage.

Your call objective may, for example, be to get the customer's agreement to attend a product demonstration, or to test a new material, or to give you access to a higher level of deci- sion maker, and in none of these cases is the commitment an order.

Larger sales contain a number of intermediate steps that we call Ad- vances. Each step advances the customer's commitment toward the final decision. It's in this area, unfortunately, that the classic closing tech- niques taught in most sales-training programs are; ineffective and may even hurt your chances of success. 

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