Should You Trust This Blog Advice?

If you’re looking for advice in the area of sales performance improvement, you don’t have to look far.

But if you’re looking for good advice, you’ll need a special pair of glasses.

The fact is that sales advice is found just about anywhere one chooses to search.

You can get counsel from a peer, a friend, or from your manager.

Tips and pointers flow from experience or even from your own imagination. And of course there is the endless string of books, CD’s, and webinars.

Perhaps most prolifically, you can find advice from blog articles like the one you are reading right now.

The advice is abundant, but that does not necessarily make it worthwhile.

In some cases you’ll find sales counsel that is downright damaging.

The Three Filters

There are just three questions you need to ask when you are seeking sales advice.

1) Does this true up with what I have experienced in the past?

If the advice is radically different than your experience you should rightly call it into question.

That does NOT mean the counsel must be disregarded, but rather that the advice should be thoroughly vetted before you put it into practice.

Sometimes contrary advice can serve the purpose of shocking you into new behaviors.

But consider this advice for when a customer says, “I’ll be back.”

One so-called sales authority suggests this (word-for-word) approach: “Great. I know you’ll be back. Here take my watch and bring it back when you return.”

Seriously? Does that even come close to lining up with your experience?

2) Can I apply this principle or technique to my future?

The second filter is about application.

If you do not believe you can apply what is being taught you will likely never use the technique.

This is why strict sales scripting is so dangerous; the word-for-word script was developed by someone who will not actually be delivering the lines.

Ask whether the technique can be realistically utilized without destroying your approach.

If that answer is no, toss the idea.

3) What would my customer think if they read the same article?

This might be the most important filter of all, because it challenges all advice against a test of manipulation.

If your customer would be disgusted with the advice given, run away.

Now with all that said, READ THE ARTICLES!

As professionals we should be fully committed to our continual improvement.

Find the people that you can trust and feast on what they have to offer.