Major Account Sales Strategy Quotes

“Successful people ask a lot more questions during sales calls than do their less successful colleagues. We found that these less successful people tend to do most of the talking.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“try to soften the differentiator. You might ask, “How do you measure machine speed? Do you mean speed for continuous run, or speed for a one-off job? Some machines are very fast under continuous run conditions, but they perform much more slowly if you have one-off production needs.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“Never try directly to diminish or minimize something which is important to another person. By making a direct challenge to a crucial criterion you are more likely to strengthen it than to diminish it. Your best strategy is to begin by accepting that the criterion is legitimately important.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“Never try directly to diminish or minimize something which is important to another person. By making a direct challenge to a crucial criterion you are more likely to strengthen it than to diminish it. Your best strategy is to begin by accepting”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“Implication Questions develop a problem by asking about its effects or consequences. In major sales, Implication Questions are very strongly linked to success during the Recognition of Needs phase.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“You must begin by deciding what problems your products can solve for customers.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“As the Exxon seller said afterward, “Unless you’ve an un-usually good price, you’ve got to have a friend in the account if you want to influence a purchasing agent. And the best friend is the person who’s having the most problems with your competitor.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“without dissatisfaction, there’s no basis for a sale.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“Do you know anybody in your company who’s experiencing problems in this area?”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“It’s important to be clear about your objectives when you approach people at the focus of receptivity. Calls to people who are purely receptive—which is a way of saying that they are not dissatisfied and they don’t have decision power—tend to be most successful if your strategic aims are to find out information about the account and the people in it and to gain access to others in the account who are located at the focus of dissatisfaction.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“Successful people tended to seek a sponsor—an individual within the account who helped them, advised them, and, if necessary, represented them in places where they couldn’t gain access.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“it’s more dangerous to ignore signals of customer concern than it is to explore potential concerns and get them out into the open.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“The most common strategic error that salespeople make in this phase of the sale is that they don’t try to uncover the customer’s guidelines, or criteria, for making the decision.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“It’s very confusing choosing between different systems. So I’d like to begin by looking at some of the factors you should consider to help you make the right choice.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy

“The most effective selling strategy during this phase is to uncover dissatisfaction in the account and to develop that dissatisfaction until it reaches the critical mass.”
― Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy