Supportive Selling

By Dale Olsen and Ben Allen-Kingsland

Supportive Selling combines a clear structure for sales calls and specific, easy-to-learn techniques sellers can use moment-to-moment throughout calls.
Dale Olsen, PhD, and Ben Allen-Kingsland draw on a vast body of experience and research on influencing in a range of fields, from Sales to Counseling to Healthcare, to help sellers:
*Present solutions with maximum impact
*Draw out buyers' most pressing needs
*Motivate them to act, and
*Convert them into champions for the sale
In any industry... in any field... Supportive Selling can help sellers reach their goals.
"Other sales methods give you a road map and a vehicle. Supportive Selling will make you an excellent driver." From the Foreword by David Zehren, Zehren-Friedman Associates

• Language: English
• Publisher: SIMmersion, Inc
• Release date: May 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311964632

Dale Olsen

Dale E. Olsen, PhD, is President and CEO of SIMmersion, LLC. His natural ability to sell was formally recognized when he was at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory he was made the Director of New Law Enforcement Programs. His success lead him to found SIMmersion and lead the business development programs. He has been selling for 20 years. Over his career, Dr. Olsen has been awarded six U.S. and international patents, has served as the principal investigator for ten research projects, has published over seventeen peer reviewed papers, has been a reviewer for Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant proposals, and has presented numerous papers at statistical, polygraph, and training conferences.A native of Chico, California, Dr. Olsen earned a B.A. in Mathematics from California State University, Chico in 1965, a M.A. in Statistics from Oregon State University in 1969 and a Ph.D. in Statistics from Oregon State University in 1973. He resides in Columbia, MD, and is married with two daughters and two grandsons.

Book preview

Supportive Selling

By Dale E. Olsen, Ph.D

with

Ben Allen-Kingsland

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1: Supportive Selling

Chapter 2: The Four Guidelines

Chapter 3: The Four Steps

1) Setting the Tone and Purpose

2) Getting a Statement of Needs

3) Presenting a Solution

4) Developing a Follow-Up Plan

Chapter 4: Tools for Selling

1) Following Up Tools

2) Building On Tools

3) Shifting the Balance Tools

Using the Tools

Chapter 5: Supportive Selling in Action

Chapter 6: Special Selling Circumstances

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Additional Resources

About the Authors

Foreword

It has been my pleasure to be in discussion with two of the great thinkers on the art and science of selling at the time they were each birthing a book through a long gestation period and a lot of labor.

My first conversation early in 2014 with Dale Olsen, who was then working on the book now in your hand or on your screen, brought to mind a conversation some years earlier with Neil Rackham, who had sent me the pre-publication manuscript of his very influential book, SPIN Selling. I had already taught the SPIN seminar in the US, Europe and Asia, and was now pleased to see the full story of the research and the ideas behind the concepts and advice. Neil and I had a lively conversation which he referenced in his book.

Dale Olsen’s Supportive Selling approach, which you will learn in this book, builds upon key SPIN Selling concepts including the importance of finding needs in their early, often undeveloped stages and then, as a principled seller, leading a buyer through a collaborative conversation that explores and develops those needs. The goal, of course, is to help the buyer see and then to describe their own need as important enough and urgent enough to deserve, perhaps require, a timely solution.

Supportive Selling also makes good use of concepts and terminology that my partner, Joe Friedman, and our colleagues at Zehren-Friedman Associates have used in the Sophisticated Selling Skills seminars that we created and delivered on six continents.

Through his long association with Johns Hopkins University and his deep experience with a conversational method called Motivational Interviewing, Dale Olsen has now added some very important thinking to the art of conversation and the process of persuasion by providing a psychological understanding of how buyers react to a seller's manner and words during a sales conversation.

Dale describes the key ideas and techniques of Motivational Interviewing in more detail in the pages ahead. Let me settle for an analogy:

SPIN Selling and Sophisticated Selling Skills give you an easy-to-read road map and a powerful vehicle. Supportive Selling will make you an excellent driver.

Dale Olsen’s second significant contribution to sales effectiveness involves new technology for building selling skills through on-line simulations. If the concepts and ideas in this book appeal to you, check out Supportive Selling With Dan Williams at http://www.SupportiveSelling.com for a real high tech driving experience.

David Zehren

Zehren-Friedman Associates

Introduction

One of my first big sales was to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, when I was representing scientists and engineers from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). APL had many capabilities that could benefit both the war on terrorism and law enforcement, and I was hoping to find ways my organization’s technical capability could help the FBI.

After a series of meetings designed to demonstrate the capabilities we brought to the table, we all huddled together with a team of top FBI scientists for a final discussion in a large conference room.

Despite all the potential for a great partnership, the conversation had bogged down, and it was clear nothing was going to happen. There was no immediate connection between APL’s presented competencies and the FBI’s top priorities at that moment in time. The meetings produced a real interest in APL’s capabilities, but the next steps were unclear. It seemed as if everyone would just go back to their offices to work on their current programs. I had seen it before, and I have seen it since. It would have all been a waste of time.

Then I asked a simple question: What is your highest priority?

This question got the potential customers thinking and matching capabilities with real needs. A few days later the FBI called with an answer. It turned out their highest priority was not in one of the capabilities we had first presented. Once I understood their stated need and proposed a solution, the sales process was complete and the contracting process, involving hundreds of thousands of dollars, began.

Decades later, I still think about what that sale taught me.

I now see that, in the early part of my conversation with the FBI, I focused on my ideas of what we had to offer. My arguments for why we’d be useful to them. My sense of where the sale should go.

Everything changed when I got them talking about their priorities, their goals and needs.

Our capabilities now had context. The problems that needed solving were out in the open, so we could figure out solutions together. I wasn’t fighting to persuade them anymore; I was supporting them and their goals. The sale was made because I had helped them identify and solve an important problem.

Using the right model for sales conversations can get you to results like this more often than you might expect. That’s the model laid out in this book: Supportive Selling.

With this book, I’ve put my experience and thoughts about selling into a model that can give sellers, like you, a new way to think about how to approach their buyers. You will find practical advice on everything from the mindset to take into a sales call and the way to structure your time with buyers, down to specific techniques for what to say and when. My co-author, Ben Allen-Kingsland, and I have set out to give you a resource to improve your chances of success with buyers of any size.

Let’s get started.

Dale

Chapter 1

Supportive Selling

A New Approach to Sales

What is Supportive Selling?

Supportive Selling is an approach you can take to create value for your buyers and help them through the stages of their decision-making process, all the way to ultimately making a purchase.

By drawing out what they need and presenting your product or service as the solution to that need, you’ll find yourself generating sales and building good relationships in the process.

Sounds simple? The core idea is, but the details draw on decades of research on how people make decisions, and how outsiders (like we sellers) can speed that process along or stop it in its tracks.

The point of this chapter is to build a foundation for the rest of the model. I’ll start by going through a few ideas you’ll see throughout the book:

The Spectrum of Sales

What success looks like

Ambivalence

Contrarians, and

Champions

The Spectrum of Sales

Think about the selling you do. Do you go on your first meeting with a buyer hoping to leave with a sale, or do you go months or more on a single account?

Do you deal with one decision maker with buying authority, or a whole roomful of stakeholders with different interests?

Do you typically close a sale in one visit, or does it take dozens of emails, conference calls, and sit-down meetings before anyone thinks about printing out a contract?

How many zeroes are in the average contract you bring in?

There’s a whole Spectrum of Sales out there that varies from industry to industry and business to business. The spectrum ranges all the way from what I’ll call Simple Sales on one end, and Complex Sales on the other:

Simple Sales

Short timeframe (a week or less)

One stakeholder with buying authority

One or two meetings before contract

Relatively small amounts of money (a few thousand per contract or less)

Complex Sales

Long timeframe (many months)

Multiple stakeholders with veto power over a purchase

Many meetings and information