The Nine-Point Sales Strategy for More Sales

‘Most people have 2 or 3 ... top sellers have 9.’
The Nine Point Sales
Strategy for More Sales
But even with sales skills you need a
clear go to market sales strategy to
leverage your skills further.
In this SPECIAL REPORT
award winning business coach
Andrew Priestley walks you through a
nine-point sales strategy for more sales.
The award winning Sales Profile
measures how you rate in 13 skills
linked to high performance in a high
value, multi-step sale. It shows you
exactly what’s working and what isn’t.
It gives you incredibly useful feedback
about your sales skills.
H H H H H
“In a word -‘Brilliant!’”

www.thesalesprofile.com
© TCE 2015 Information Only 1
The Nine-Point Sales Strategy for More Sales
By Andrew Priestley
“Good selling always feels good for everyone concerned. If you
want to excel in sales genuinely sell the way you’d like to be
sold to.”
At a glance
There is a lot of wisdom in the above remark. Success in sales
is based on the principle that both parties in a transaction see
and experience mutual value.
I am writing as a business coach and someone who has
enjoyed a certain degree of success in selling multi-step, high-
value products and services over the past 25 years.
I want to share with other professionals some of the guiding
principles I have found benefitted both me and my clients.
Who is this report for?
This report was written for anyone in frontline sales and
especially for anyone who employs sales people. This material
was designed to give you a useful sales context and enable
you and your team to dramatically improve your performance,
skills and sales results.
The Key Principle: Context is everything
Most sales books and sales training programs aim to improve
your sales skills. And they should because selling is a
profession and success relies on a high degree of skills

competency. So understanding your strengths and
weaknesses in sales skills is a key recommendation of this
report.
This report is intended to help you form a more complete
picture of:
1. Your overall sales environment – buying process, sales
process, sales style etc
2. The selling skills of your sales people; and
3. If there’s a good match between your sales skills and
your overall sales environment. You do not want a
mismatch.
The Sales Profile
You can assess your strengths and weaknesses in selling via an
award-winning tool called the Sales Profile.
Traditional vs Modern Selling
But somewhere in there you run into this whole traditional vs.
modern selling skills debate.
The truth is both traditional and modern selling techniques
work just fine in the right type of sale. And traditional and
modern selling techniques are woefully out of place in the
wrong type of sale.
So it will help you to decide what is the right type of sale for
your business and what is most appropriate way for you to sell
to your typical customer.

What do I do when I’m helping a client improve
their sales performance?
In addition to profiling sales skills I have included a series of
questions that will help you to better understand what you
are selling, the way you sell, who your customers are and how
they like to buy.
When I meet with a new client, and the focus of the coaching
is sales, I usually ask the following nine questions to get a
sense of where you need the most help in improving sales
results.
The nine questions are:
1. What do you sell?
2. Who do you sell to - exactly?
3. What type of sale is it?
4. How do people buy what you sell?
5. What is your sales process?
6. What selling skills are needed in your sales process?
7. Do your selling skills match the buying and sales
process?
8. How is sales success measured in your business?
9. What sales environment do you operate in?
This report covers nine of the most frequently asked
questions. So let’s jump straight into those questions.

#1 What do you sell?
Take a few moments and make a list of everything you sell.
You might need to organise what you sell by category or by
price point or by whatever makes the most sense to you and
your customers.
Seems straightforward enough right? Try and go a bit deeper
than your bog standard Yellow Pages or Google search
category.
• I sell accounting services.
• I sell plumbing.
• I sell home technology.
Most businesses offer a range of products and services that
vary in price.
For example, an accounting firm I worked with recently has
142 accounting services that range from £90-£3000. Those
services need to be arranged into some logical format that
makes it easy to market and sell … and easy for customers to
buy.
As an example, most accountants can sort their services into
four logical segments: compliance, business support, business
advice and strategic services.
The plumber can sort services into: domestic, commercial and
industrial. Or gas and hot water. Or bathrooms and kitchens
and toilets. Or standard and emergency.

The home technology made it a lot easier for clients by
segmenting their products and services into audio, cinema,
lighting, climate and security and a straightforward ballpark
pricing scale that ranged from £10K-£250K.
You might also rank your products and services by worst and
best sellers.
Your turn
What do you sell?
Is it easy for customers to understand?
What degree of product or service knowledge is required to
professionally sell what you sell?

#2 Who do you sell to? Exactly?
Right now you need to identify and focus on your target
customer.
If you don’t know whom your target customers are then most
likely you leaving money on the table. If you are trying to be
all things to everyone you are most probably losing money.
Most businesses have a range of customers that live on a
spectrum of highly profitable (make you money) to highly
unprofitable (lose you money).
Performing even the most basic of customer analysis will give
you a good idea of what segments make up your customer
base. And therefore, who to focus on most.
For example, our accountant has 350 clients. He discovered
that most of his clients only require a £90 end-of-year tax
personal return that generate 16% of total sales revenues. But
a small percentage of clients are husband and wife family run
service business owners (plumbers, electricians etc) that
account for 68% of all revenues.
But the tax returns - the thing that makes the least amount of
money – takes the most time.
You might also rank your customers as A, B, C or D Class. An A
Class customer is your best and a D Class is your worst.
So who are you’re A Class clients? And your D Class?
The point is now more than ever you should be totally clear
about who your target customer is.

My clients typically get a tremendous uplift in sales simply by
focusing on their target customer or niche market.
Your turn
Who makes up your customer base?
Who are your most profitable clients?

#3 What type of sale is it?
There are about four main types of sale:
1. Generic
2. Influencing
3. Consulting
4. Strategic
Generic
A generic sale is usually really a straightforward even if it has a
high price tag. It basically means your customer can make a
buying decision right here and now, on the spot.
In any case it’s usually fast.
For example, if you shop online or in-store … and you are
basically picking and paying … then it’s pretty much a
straightforward generic sale.
In this case, customers want some support in reaching a
buying decision but nothing too sophisticated. Traditional
selling skills work really well in a generic sale whereas a
consultative approach would probably confuse the customer
and waste your time.
A lot of people operate generically so a proficiency in basic
sales skills is useful.
Does this sound like you?
Influencing
An influencing sale relies much more on persuading,
convincing or influencing selling skills. Appropriately, this
requires more skill in questioning and qualifying to close the
sale.

Irrespective of price, there may be more steps in the sales
process.
Importantly, the customer wants to interact and engage with
a salesperson to help them make a buying decision. They may
need help to determine if their needs will be met.
In an influencing sale you may have multi-steps. You may
need to warm or cold call a prospect, book an appointment
and sell a product or service usually still in a short amount of
time.
The influencing type sale is often thought of as traditional
selling where the sales person is relying on well-honed
qualifying, closing and objection handling skills.
And you can assume a sale will take place during a client
appointment.
Importantly, a customer can make a buying decision on the
spot or soon after, or they have the power to authorise a
purchase sometime after the sale.
In an influencing sale is it vitally important to understand your
strengths and weaknesses in frontline selling.
Consulting
A consulting sale is most like consultative selling and is often
referred to as modern selling. The strong focus here is
ensuring that you totally understand the explicit needs of the
client - as expressed by the client. Determining needs may
not be as simple as ‘Do you want it or not?’ Often you need to
carefully assess the customers needs and implications of

misunderstanding their needs.
The difference here is a poor buying experience can carry
more serious consequences than a customer complaint or a
sales reversal (refund) if you fail to help the customer reach
the right buying decision.
A consulting sale may follow a definite process with strict
protocols that must be observed. In this scenario you may not
even have access to the final decision makers.
You may be part of a quoting, proposal or formal tendering
process and your ‘bid’ might even be independently assessed
as part of a documented and formal procurement process.
If you assume a sale or even suggest that you are guessing or
assuming the clients needs you will most likely run into
obstacles, penalties or disqualification from the process.
You may also need to be a registered, accredited or licensed
seller or a registered preferred buyer to even participate in the
consultative process.
A consulting sale as you can see is more complex and involves
more time and you may even incur costs just to submit a
proposal with no guarantee of even being able to ‘consult’.
In any case, once you qualify to consult you will need a high
level of sales skills so the Sales Profile is highly recommended.
You do not want to put a rank amateur or a sales cowboy into
a consulting process.
Does this sound like your typical sale?

Strategic
The strategic sale is like a consulting sale on steroids! The time
frames are much longer, the stakes are a lot higher and in fact
you typically will partner with your customer short and long
term in making a far reaching long term decision and you will
be linked to that client for the after-life of that sale.
In the first three, you typically stop engaging with client once
the purchase is made unless you are making a repeat
purchase, selling an upgrade or commencing a maintenance
relationship.
In a strategic sale you are part of the sale and implementation.
Invariably, you will spend a lot of time and money tendering
for the sale with no guarantees of even making a sale.
The process will usually involve a sales, project management
and implementation skills.
This type of sale is very sophisticated. Typically your client is
making a long-term strategic commitment and you are part of
that long-term solution.
Think selling a fleet of Boeing A380s or constructing a major
public works like a dam or a bridge or building a tenant lead
shopping centre with 25 year leases or taking a historically
offline national business online i.e., banking and you’ve got
the idea.
Selling skills need to be of a very high order with a clear focus
on qualifying and presenting. But a service agreement will
only be awarded provided you can demonstrate your ability
to service that contract long-term.

#4. How do customers typically buy your products
and services?
There are two alternatives here. Your client can make a
discretionary spend or they must follow a process such as a
tender or procurement process.
If you can make an appointment with a decision maker, have a
sales conversation, ask for a sales and that person can agree to
the sale then and there or soon after it’s a discretionary sale.
Note: some clients can make a discretionary purchase if what
you are selling fits inside their discretionary budget. For
example, I have a client that has learned to chop up his
services into £19,999 parcels because his clients cannot
authorize a purchase once it exceeds £20,000.
But they can purchase phases 2 and 3 etc as long as each
phase is less than £20,000.
If your client loves your products and services but cannot
authorize a purchase of any amount because it has to go to
tender or three quotes or via a procurement process then it’s a
process sale.
Many people want to deal with larger corporate and C-suite
clients and they have a brilliant product … but they run
headlong into a strident purchasing policy that doesn’t make
any sense whatsoever.
I recently coached an interim recruitment specialist and he
consistently runs into draconian ‘head count’ issues and ‘body
shop’ based procurement policies that retard making sensible
choices.
If you have to work with these issues then traditional selling

skills will only take you as far as earning you the right to
submit a proposal at best. In this case you customer’s buying
process will shape how a sale is made.
Your turn
Which sounds like you?

#5. What is your sales process?
Every business has a sales process. Every business. A lot of
businesses do not have a documented sales process. And
some don’t even know now what their sales process is. But
you have one.
It might be really simple and straight forward – one or two
steps – as in a generic sale – you pick it and pay for it. Or it
might be a multi-step process.
Starbucks has a sales process. People enter the shop, select
from a menu, line up, place and order, upsize their order
possibly, pay, wait, collect the order, consume and leave.
A client of mine sells financial advisory services to court
appointed lawyers who represent clients with diminished
mental capacity to manage their financial affairs. Those
lawyers are often misadvised by fund managers and
subsequently are at risk of being prosecuted by Public
Guardians.
The sales process is usually a lot of social media awareness
campaigns, networking, advertising, public speaking etc. They
invest in list building activities that turn into email or tele-
prospecting to sell an appointment and then a sample
reporting service and finally financial representation.
In other words: a complex, multi-step sale.
Every step in your sales process needs to be carefully
identified and ensured that it fits into a logical and effective
selling sequence.
By the way, Starbucks used to let you order sit-down coffee
and pay on leaving. They moved ONE step – the payment -

from the end to right up the front after you ordered and the
rest as they say is history.
Some clients of mine have really amazing sales processes that
in them selves are part of a broader campaign and inspiring
customer experience.
Your turn
Describe your sales process.

#6. What sales skills do you use most? Why?
The Sales Profile measures your skill in ten key sales skills.
There is a lot of research dating back to the 1860s into sales
skills. Depending on whom you talk to there are four or 84 key
sales skills but most people agree there are seven!
Historically they are:
• Rapport
• Qualifying
• Presenting a solution
• Closing
• Handling Objections
If you were trained in insurance in the 1920s you would have
been trained in a sales cycle called ‘Back the Hearse up’. It
consisted of four steps:
• Relax – put the client at ease
• Disturb – tell them something really scary that might
happen to them i.e., heart attack, death, lose your job
• Relieve – tell them there’s insurance to cover that
• Close – sell them that insurance policy
I reviewed over 173 selling systems and 43 top sales training
programmes. The model of the sales cycle we assess in the
Sales Profile includes a more complete ten distinct skills;
presented to you in a before, during and after sequence.
These are commonly observed standard steps in the sale.

The Sales Profile assesses:
Before
• Knowledge
• Readiness
• Prospecting
During
• Rapport
• Qualifying
• Presenting
• Closing
• Handling Objections
After
• Administration
• After sales
But what’s new is we also assess three traits that drive high
performance in a sales role. They are:
Sales Skills Drivers
• Attitude
• Drive
• Communication/influencing skills
What we have noticed is two interesting outcomes.
Firstly, often highly skilled sales person with poor attitude and
a low sales drive are often outperformed by lower skilled
people with great attitudes and a high sales drive.
Poor attitude and low drive to succeed in a frontline sales role
is typically the salesperson’s enemy.

So good attitude and sales drive is predictive of sales
performance and well worth knowing.
You can take the test right now at

#7. Do your selling skills match the typical style of
sale, buying process and sales process?
This is an all-important question because invariably when
theirs a mismatch you are underperforming, missing
opportunities, leaving money on the table or un-selling your
potential customers.
It goes without saying that if you employ sales people you
should totally understand their selling skills. So the Sales
Profile is a great tool for doing exactly that.
But there is no point in assessing sales skills if you then omit to
match skills to the sales process, for example. Here’s why.
I worked with an engineering firm who received world class
sales training … that failed to increase sales. At which point I
was bought in as a last resort. I got the sales team to walk me
through a typical sale and it immediately became apparent
that most of the sales skills they were being taught were not
permissible in the procurement/tendering process they had
to follow.
For example, they were not allowed to ask for the order, close
or handle objections in any way shape or form. All they were
allowed to do in the procurement process was question,
qualify and present a proposal.
The sales trainer had spent weeks on closing and objection
handling techniques! He had not even considered the style
and type of sales, the buying process or their sales process.
Plus being engineers they HATED closing and objection
handling techniques and rightfully all agreed that they were
being given a personality by-pass! But being engineers they
all loved questioning and explaining and problem solving and

hypothesizing. And presenting. When I profiled the engineers
I discovered that almost ALL the engineers OVER-presented. In
the spirit of ask a engineer the time and they will build you a
watch and explain how it was done, my trainees were
drowning prospective clients in a tsunami of information.
Once they mastered questioning and qualifying and giving
just enough relevant information their capture management
results rocketed from £7M to £75M in the pipeline!
Identifying their strengths, the type of sale and the buying
process made a huge difference. Up until that point there was
a mismatch.
Notice that it wasn’t just old school vs modern selling
techniques. What was missing was an appreciation of the
broader sales context.
So, is there a good match? How do you know?

#8. How do you measure success in your sales
culture?
There are many ways to assess sales performance such as old
fashioned leader boards and hitting sales targets, to meeting
key performance indicators (KPIs), and closely monitoring
sales dashboards and tracking TAV and AMR statistics. There
are some highly sophisticated metrics that monitor cost of
acquisition and fulfillment and back costing.
Importantly you should monitor quotes-in-tray to sales ratio
and factor in uncompleted sales, warranty claims and sales
reversals; and customer complaints.
You need to know these numbers.
And every business needs to identify exactly how success will
be monitored and measured.
So how exactly do you measure sales success in your
business?

#9. What broader sales environment do you
operate in?
Finally, you do not and cannot sell in a bubble. You sell within
two important contexts: a legal or ethical environment; and
increasingly a digital reputation environment.
This might sounds incredibly boring but trust me you cannot
ignore this aspect (if ever you could).
Legal/ethical
Frankly, far too many businesses are not aware of their legal
and ethical obligations.
Whether you are aware or not your sales practices and
behaviours are legal regulated by someone, somewhere.
You need to understand your obligations and the
consequences. What more can I say, but do your homework.
Offline you might be governed by Consumer Affairs, Trade
Practices Act, The Food Act, The Health Act, The Office of
Consumers and even contract law. You might be restricted by
national, regional and local laws and by-laws and local
authority ordinances.
Again, you need to check.
You may need to be registered or accredited or licensed. For
example, if you need an ISO rating or you need to be a
preferred supplier and you aren’t, your business will stall. And
worse you will incur fines and penalties.

Digital
I sell information products online.
For a long time I didn’t realize I am regulated by Doorstep
Selling Regulations and the Distance Selling Act 2000. As of this
writing, those ended in June 2014 in the UK but were replaced
by Consumer Contracts Regulations.
For example, a trader cannot charge for pre-ticked boxes
online. You can cancel sales such as a gym membership,
purchased online after 14 days and you should get a refund
within 14 days of cancelling goods and services purchased
online.
This is just a sample of laws that are fully enforceable across
borders.
My customers have international rights under these Acts and
they can be enforced here in the UK.
You would be a fool to ignore your obligations. But people do.
But what happens if you manage to stay inside the law but
deliver a sub-par sales experience?
People think that online is like the Wild West – there are no
rules. It’s true enough that the internet is not a jurisdiction –
yet - but there are some penalties more severe than fines like
trial by social media brand damage.
Sometime ago I sold an old laptop on EBay. Today I received a
letter stating they wanted to return the item because it was
not what had been described in the ads. (Apparently my
laptop was 2007 not 2009 – and it was a genuine mistake).

But the letter says:
a) if I don’t comply they will create an EBay driven
investigation
b) my rating will be affected.
I have a 100% rating on EBay that I’ve had since Day 1. There
are no blemishes. So of course, I am issuing a full refund and
accepting the return. That’s what I would want too, if it were
me.
The point is EBay customers READ the ratings and reviews to
determine if you are a reputable dealer. I do too.
I have a great EBay reputation and I want to keep it. Any
change to my rating will impact any sales I want to conduct
on EBay.
Of course, EBay and customers have to matter to you.
It’s the same with Amazon and YouTube. Poor ratings and
reviews – which Google tell us ARE read - will sink your
business.
If you decide to be cowboy salesperson – shonky on or offline -
you might find yourself the target of Tweets, Posts, Ratings,
Reviews and Customer Feedback Surveys – and all searchable
on line.
A lot of people use Twitter and Facebook to complain online if
they feel there was no justice from the company they have a
dispute with.
The bad news is reputation or brand damage is forever. Once
its up and posted it’s there. You have created a digital
footprint.

If you have any doubt whatsoever, read Google’s research
document Zero Moment of Truth and you will be totally
convinced that your sell with a very fluid and dynamic digital
environment.

Next Steps
This report is very much a snapshot of the issues I help my
clients resolve. The typical result is a noticeable if not dramatic
uplift in their sales.
I hope you have got the idea that sales training is a lot broader
than learning how to close and handle objections.
I hope you can see that you sell within a context and once you
understand that context you will typically improve your sales
results.
A big part of your sales context is your selling skills because
they actually sit underneath most of the nine aspects even in
consultative and strategic sales. Or impact them.
It is therefore crucial to understand your selling skills.
Easy to complete
It takes about seven minutes to complete the Sales Profile
online.
Easy to understand
The Sales Profile is really easy to understand.
There’s a horizontal pink zone and some vertical bars. If those
vertical bars are within that pink zone – good job. If they are
outside the pink zone either too high or too low they are clearly
flagging sales coaching or training targets.
Great feedback
You also get bespoke feedback to how you answered every
question. That is unique.

Ten Sales Skills
The Sales Profile rates your strengths in ten selling skills
observed in high value, multi-step sales – both influencing a
consultative sales.
Attitude and Drive to Succeed in a frontline sales role
Plus we show your attitude and your drive to succeed in a
frontline sales role. That is new and unique to the award
winning Sales Profile.
Now you can better match your skills to your type of sale and
sales process. I can’t emphasis that enough.
Easy to interpret
You can now better assess your approach to sales against
what type of sale is considered normal and professional in
your industry.
That might better inform you of the sales training you actually
need. For example, if you operate within a tendering process
and therefore cannot Close a potential customer then don’t
spend any money on learning how to Close . Clearly the best
way to spend your training budget is in Presenting or
Qualifying, for example.
Easy to identify training or coaching targets
The Sales profile makes it a LOT easier to identify training
targets. You can SEE them!
Your invitation
Thank you for reading this report. I sincerely hope you did the
workshop. And I sincerely hope you profile your sales people
using the Sales Profile.

Ready to do the Sales Profile?
Thanks.
Andrew Priestley

Take the Test
“High performing salespeople are like rocket fuel for your business!”
The Sales Profile
The Sales Profile measures your drive to succeed
and how you rate against 13 skills associated with
high performance in frontline sales.
You get easy to understand graphs of your results,
an appraisal of the 13 skills and bespoke feedback
to how you answered key questions.
Use your Sales profile to understand exactly what
is working and what needs fixing.
Importantly, your chart can be used to better
match your skills to the sales processes used
in your business.
If you are not completely satisfied you can ask
for a full refund and receive one with only one
question asked: How can we improve the Sales
Profile and make it even better?
If you are in Sales Training or Sales Recruitment
The Sales Profile is an excellent resource for your
clients especially if you are an individual trainer,
a sales training organisation, or coach or
Recruitment Company.
Get your personalised detailed report of 13 high performance selling
skills and the measure of your drive to succeed.
White-labelling
It is available as a private-label service that can
be badged with your own corporate branding.
For more info please email
privatebranding@thesalesprofile.com
If you manage a Sales Team
Get your team members to take ownership and
responsibility by them highlighting their own
profile. Quickly assess individuals sales skills and
drive and identify appropriate training needs.
For large numbers of sales individuals and teams
we offer a bespoke reporting service where training
needs can be grouped and identified. For further
info please email
teams@thesalesprofile.com
Referrers and Affiliates Link
Every person who completes the Sales Profile auto-
matically receives and individualised affiliate link.
If you share the personalised link below you will
earn a small fee from any referrals that go on to
complete the Sales Profile. Please share:
http://bit.ly/1MNXzKg

The Nine-Point Sales Strategy for More Sales

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