Selling Versus Telling

By Gil Cargill, Sales Acceleration Coach

There seems to be an age-old debate regarding the differences between selling and telling. When I make sales calls with my clients’ salespeople, I’ve noted an increase in the number of sales calls which are inappropriately identified as selling. More often than not, these people are telling.

They tell the customer about their products or services. They tell their customer about the company that employs them. They tell their customer about the features of their products and services. In other words, they’re quite able to disgorge all of the speeds and feeds associated with their product. Salespeople that adhere to this approach to selling are really telling their customers about their product or service; they’re not selling.

Salespeople who sell solve business problems for their customers. They understand the application of their product or service will produce a measurable and permanent improvement in one of more of the operating conditions within their prospect’s business. If you’re not solving a business problem, all you are doing is showing your customer a product or service and hoping that they will see the light and make the appropriate decision.

Tragically, most sales orientations (I’m hesitant to call them training sessions) highlight all of the product’s features but very few, if any, of the results that the application of the product or service will produce for the customer. The results that are produced should, in a perfect selling environment, involve some discussion of measurements and some quantification of the beneficial results that are produced.

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