I’m always trying to illustrate how professional sales really works -- helping your prospect self-realize that he or she needs (or in some cases, doesn’t need) your product or service. One of the best examples I’ve ever seen is one that happened to me when I decided to purchase a new Jeep.

Several years ago, I married a wonderful man who had two children. I also had a child of my own, so we were going to need a more “Brady-esque” car. After a lot of research, we decided that a Jeep Cherokee would do the trick. At that time, A Cherokee Laredo, the base model, would cost $299 a month to lease for three years with $1,000 down. A good deal for us by all accounts.

Since I know how car dealers work (or so I thought), I felt very strongly about staying emotionally detached and just purchasing the car for the price I wanted. I called the local Jeep dealership and asked for the sales manager. Richard (who I believe is still there) answered the phone. I explained to him that I wanted a Jeep Cherokee Laredo, dark green in color, and that I’d be willing to buy it today if he could match the price I wanted: $299 for a 36 month lease plus $1,000 down.

I was strong in my demand, making sure he knew I was in charge. Richard said he could match the price, but the only Cherokee Laredo he had on the lot was army green, not the dark green I wanted. Even though I was disappointed (the dark green is so much more “me”), I decided it was the route to go.

We arrived at the dealership, and I commanded my fiancée and the kids to stay in the car. “Wait here,” I said. “I’ll handle this.”

I walked into the showroom, where Richard greeted me. “You must be Greta,” he said with a sincere-looking smile.

“I am, “ I answered cautiously.

He smiled. “OK. Let’s go drive the car.”

I stopped him. “Oh no,” I exclaimed. “I want to talk money first!”

“Okay,” Richard replied. “But didn’t you say $299 for three years with $1,000 down? Since that’s what we agreed to, that’s what it is, right?”

With a half-smile on my face, I nodded proudly. “Right!”

As we walked through the lot to the army green (more of a pea green, actually) Jeep, Richard asked which car in the parking lot was mine. I pointed to the blue BMW where my fiancée and our kids waited. As we got into the Jeep, Richard made an interesting comment. “This car doesn’t have a leather interior,” he said. “It’s cloth, but that shouldn’t be a problem. I’m sure your kids don’t spill things at their age.”

“No, that’s OK,” I quickly replied.

As we pulled out of the dealership for the test drive, Richard played with the radio, then asked what kind of music I liked.

“Oh gosh, jazz. Top 40. Lot’s of different things.”

“Really?” he replied. “Do you have a lot of CDs?”

“Oh yes!” I proudly proclaimed. 

“Hmmm,” he mused. “You know this car doesn’t have a CD player, but I’m sure you’ve got cassettes.”

“Or I’ll just play the radio,” I said, not without reservation.

He smiled. “Of course you can,” he replied confidently.

As we pulled back into the dealership lot, Richard asked “So, what do you think?”

“Pretty nice,” I hesitantly replied. “It drives more like a truck, but hey, it’s not a BMW and you have to give up something, right?”

Silent, I walked into the showroom to go sign the papers.

“Hey Greta,” I heard Richard suddenly say. “That emerald green on that car down at the end of the lot…was that the color you originally asked me for?”

I felt sudden excitement. “Yes! But I thought you didn’t have one.”

“Not for a Laredo. But that’s a Grand Cherokee. It’s got all the bells and whistles, you know…CD player, leather seats and a smoother drive train. But that’s not the one you said you wanted.”

I couldn’t resist. “Ummmmm … how much more is it?”

Guess which one I drove away in (and only paid $70 more a month more for)? You got it!

And guess what I said to my fiancée when we were walking toward our new Grand Cherokee? “Honey, it’s more expensive, but I’m in sales. My car is like my office. I have to be comfortable.”

So what happened? Well, Richard did a really good job of finding out what was important to me. But he never told me those things were important. Instead, he asked the right questions that got me to self-realize that I wanted those things.

And what did I do? I made an emotional decision and justified it intellectually to my family. Remember, people love to buy, but they absolutely hate to be sold. So help them buy and stop selling them. It even worked on me, and I saw it coming.

Greta Schulz is president of Schulz Business SELLutions in West Palm Beach, FL. She is the author of "To Sell is Not to Sell" and a columnist for business journals around the country. Greta does corporate training for Fortune 1000 companies and she has an on-line training course for entrepreneurs.

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“I really can’t say that what you’ve shown me, Bob, does anything for me,” stated the prospect.

“In fact,” he went on, “your choice of colors is nowhere as extensive as your competitor’s, who was just in here this morning, by the way.”

Bob hated this type of prospect. And for some reason, the past five months had been filled with them. Gosh, thought Bob, this is going to be one of those meetings where he raises the hundred objections and I try to beat them down one after another.  There’s got to be a better way to make a living. “I didn’t know you were looking at anyone else,” responded Bob.

“Well, it’s what I should do. And I’ll tell you this now, right upfront, her prices are extremely favorable.  I doubt you could beat them.”

Here goes, thought Bob, start knocking them down. “Let’s talk about the colors; our colors are by far the…” Two hours later, Bob crawled out of the office with a signed purchase order. Totally exhausted, he got into his car, called the office and read them the order.

“Good work,” the sales manager responded, “but how come he’s ordering less than before?”

“The competition has got a proposal on the table,” responded Bob, “you wouldn’t believe what I had to do to get what we did.”  With a felling of dread he added, “I’m going back next week to see if I can knock them out.”

Bob was so afraid that he was going to lose the client that he was prepared to do just about anything to keep him. Bob had the guts to spend another two hours butting heads, but he did not have the guts to find out if he really needed to do this.

Taking a sale away, taking yourself out of the running, and then waiting for a response from the prospect/customer takes real guts. This is not a technique for those with weak knees. No one can fault Bob for his dedication to task. And most salespeople and sales managers would agree that in the above story, which happens every day, there was nothing else to do but “gut it out.” But there is something else.

Before Bob launched into meeting every objection, he could have done something very simple. He could have said, “You might not realize what you are telling me; I want to make sure that I have it right. The competition has more colors, the price is good, they were here this morning, I guess it’s over for me. When you gave the order to the salesperson this morning, was she excited?” And then wait for a response from the prospect, no matter how long it takes. In order for this technique to work, your really have to mean it and be prepared to “walk out the door” and not look back. If you cannot do this, this technique will blow up in your face. However, if you are truly prepared to walk away, this technique is incredibly powerful at eliminating objections. There are a multitude of words and gestures that you can use to “take it away” depending on what you are trying to accomplish and with whom.

Customers and prospects alike are famous for stating, in so many words, that the other guy can do better for less. In essence, you want to mirror back to them what they just told you and then state, not ask, “You did place the order.” Then do not speak until you get a response. Either the order has been placed or not. If is has, it probably really is over for you. If it hasn’t, then you deserve to know the reasons why. And when you find out why? You are now learning what you need to do to get the order or keep the order.

Prospects who gave given all the indications of being ready to buy, but who just resist closing, are especially susceptible to having it taken away. “Bill, you have given every indication that you are ready to buy. But for some reason you just aren’t sharing, you keep stopping short. I think I should leave.” Then wait for a response.

MORAL: Take it away ONLY if you are prepared to walk out the door. Once you take it away, wait for a response regardless of how long it takes.

Greta Schulz is president of Schulz Business SELLutions in West Palm Beach, FL. She is the author of "To Sell is Not to Sell" and a columnist for business journals around the country. Greta does corporate training for Fortune 1000 companies and she has an on-line training course for entrepreneurs.

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Are you still nervous about the economy?

Are the upcoming elections causing you to tighten the ole’ belt?

Have you come to the conclusion that we are all in the dark about when it will actually be over?

This is not a time for anxiety, but a time to be realistic and acknowledge that tough times lay ahead. Adjustments have to be made in your sales team and in the way they approach sales. If you don’t do it now, the competition certainly will. During the past, in our economic “high,” I’m sure your sales team and numbers grew exponentially. But seeing as though your longer term salespeople had been used to sales falling in their lap, have they fully adjusted to the new reality or are they still using the economy as an excuse for not making those adjustments? With the recession still lingering, what should we expect from our “order takers” of the past? Probably not a whole bunch!

Right now, the weak part of your company is probably still your sales team. Companies are becoming aggravated very quickly when their salespeople aren’t selling for reasons you think are out of their control.  Sales people, too, are getting discouraged when they don’t close sales, not knowing that their sales in the previous bull market were simply coming to them with little to no work involved. A lot of companies wait until they’re desperate, then layoffs and cost cutting will start. The smart companies know that they should evaluate their sales force now, finding out who really has effective selling skills to utilize in the slump that we’re about to face.

When assessing your team, remember to ask yourself the following questions:

What are the necessary elements for selling in this economy?
Who has these elements?
Who does not have these skills and should we replace them?
Who should we replace them with?

Don’t fall victim your salesperson’s beliefs that “people are spending less” and “it’s an election year.”  Excuses, excuses, excuses!

Don’t believe that just because they’ve done well in the past, they may be right. If they’re not strong enough to make it through tough times, they probably don’t belong on your team! You must ask yourself, “have they really been selling or were they just order takers that got lucky?” If you’re not sure, you have to evaluate their skills! Go on a sales call with them and see how they do in the “real world.” Another option is having them take an assessment that shows the skills they truly have… And the ones they don’t. Masked weaknesses show themselves when you least expect it.

Hold your ground and act as though the economy is flourishing! I know you think I’m crazy, but hear me out. If you remember that the economy is cyclical, you won’t fall prey to the negative thoughts about our current situation. When things are bad, nothing should change. Then you’re not falling into a slump, but simply continuing to work hard until things come back around. (Which they always do!) If you turn “fat and happy,” you’ll never make it through. Neither our mortgage lender, our bank, nor the power company will accept the excuse of the economy for non-payment. Why should we? Should we make some adjustments? Possibly, but now the real sales professionals will shine through the excuse makers. You will see real creativity and out of the box thinking like never before. Now you will really see what separates the men... well, you know the cliché.

Greta Schulz is president of Schulz Business SELLutions in West Palm Beach, FL. She is the author of "To Sell is Not to Sell" and a columnist for business journals around the country. Greta does corporate training for Fortune 1000 companies and she has an on-line training course for entrepreneurs. Click here to share this post.

While watching football with my husband a story came on during halftime about a college football player. I can’t remember his name, but he was a Boston College hero. A few years ago, he was a shining star. He was the one who, many said, was going to not only play professionally but also be drafted in the first round. All of a sudden, in his third year of playing, he had some pain in his legs. His family took him to the doctor. Well, he had cancer. He had bone cancer, and it had hit one of his legs. They were devastated.

After a short gasp, he asked the doctor “What we can do?” The doctor explained that they were going to put a metal rod in his leg and, after all of that, a long bout with rehab. He asked “When will I be able to go back to football?”

The doctor said “You will probably never play football again."

“No, no, you don’t understand," the player said, "I’m playing football. That’s my life. It’s just a matter of when I can get back to doing it, not if.”

What I really liked about this story is life is all about choice.

I recently did some shopping with my daughter. At lunch, we were talking about her brother. If you follow my column, you know that, about a year ago, a shark bit our son, and basically the same thing happened. After five hours of surgery and 400 stitches, he asked the doctor “When I will be able to get back to baseball?"

The doctor said “Don’t worry about baseball; just make sure your foot is OK.”

My son said “No, no. I will be playing baseball. When will I be able to get back?”After six months of rehab and after dropping a 10-pound weight on his finger and six weeks of healing from that, almost exactly one year to the day after his shark bite, he was signed by the Kansas City Royals’ minor league baseball team.

At lunch, our daughter said to me “Someday, if Clayton makes it to the big leagues--”

I stopped her, “Jessie, it has nothing to do with if, it has to do with when. If Clayton chooses to go to the big leagues, and he does what he does now, which is work harder than everybody else, longer than everybody else, and puts more in than everybody else, he will be in the big leagues.”

After looking at me with her eyes squinted like she was pondering that comment deeply, she said “But what about the other great players, and what if they don’t choose him?” I shook my head and said with 100 percent confidence that if he decides to be in the big leagues, he’ll do it. Choosing your path, the things that you do in your life, are a choice. They’re your choice. For some reason, we all forget that and let others decide.

Clayton may have to fight harder, look for a different path than the one he was originally on, but it is a choice that he will make: To have his life the way he wants it. If Clayton decides that he wants to continue on this path and he wants to play on TV in the major leagues, he’s going to. Nothing will get in his way. If somebody is chosen ahead of him, he will just work harder and go out there to be chosen next. If it takes him longer than he thought, then he will just work harder until he gets there. If a coach, a player, anybody gets in his way, he’ll just work around them.

When you make a choice to do something in your life, you do it. You may not know the time frame and you may not know the exact circumstances, but either way, you follow your choice. I said “Jessie, Clayton will be in the major leagues because he’s decided and made a decision that’s what he wants.”

She looked at me and said “You know, I think that makes sense.”

What’s important for all of us to remember is that we have to decide what our fate is. Our fate has very little, if anything, to do with people and circumstances around us, who we work for, the economic situation or anything else. Those are obstacles that get in our way, and our job is to work over, under, around or through them. They only get in our way if we let them. If something is in your way, remember it’s just a hurdle and you have to jump over it. The question is: How high are you willing to jump?

Greta Schulz is president of Schulz Business SELLutions in West Palm Beach, FL. She is the author of "To Sell is Not to Sell" and a columnist for business journals around the country. Greta does corporate training for Fortune 1000 companies and she has an on-line training course for entrepreneurs.

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Greta Schulz is president of Schulz Business SELLutions in West Palm Beach, FL. She is the author of "To Sell is Not to Sell" and a columnist for business journals around the country. Greta does corporate training for Fortune 1000 companies and she has an on-line training course for entrepreneurs.

Click here to share this post.