Star Builder

Background

Selling is something carried out by many people in life, not just people who call themselves sales people. It is important to understand this, as one can then see that learning a framework for selling is thus important for most people in life, not just those pursuing a career in sales.

In this book Simon Hazeldine sets out a simple framework for you to follow, and ensures that you understand some of the major pitfalls in sales - including selling the features not the benefits.

Selling Benefits Not The Features

One of the many topics that Simon covers in his book is not to sell the product, but rather the benefits. Consider a laptop, it has a dual core processor, 3 Gb or RAM, a 350GB hard drive, a high resolution screen and a battery life of 4 hours. If you proceed to sell a product to me based on the features you have made one of the most school boy errors in sales, how did you know I was interested in any of those features?

Firstly you need to understand what I am looking for in a laptop, am I using it for just browsing the web or am I a hardcore programmer needing sheer power and speed? Is the product the most suited to my needs or is there something more appropriate from your range?

When you come to sell me the product you would then possibly say, this laptop is light yet has an eight hour battery life which given that you are on the road a lot without a power point nearby is probably important to you. In short you link a feature to a benefit for the prospect, and it has to be a benefit to the prospect not just a general benefit.

Why Buy This Book?

Simon will teach you how to properly prospect, and to correctly sell without falling into the many traps that are awaiting you. He tells of an amusing story about a car salesman that made assumptions about who was the petrol head in the relationship, and ultimately the salesman lost the sale as a result. He also covers his experience of a poor double glazing salesman that left his house with his tail between the legs, and how the learning from that event is important for all of us when dealing with reducing price.

As with his negotiating book, this is a simple to read book with a clearly laid out framework for you to follow. The tactics and processes you learn from this book provide a good solid grounding in sales.