Business Exchange

HATTIE: Here is advice on sales from a man whose firm has trained more than a million sales people. Ron Willingham is chairman of Integrity Training Systems of Phoenix. He is also the author of "Integrity Selling," "The Best Seller," and other books, as well as more than 30 training courses.

Ron, people are more sophisticated than ever. Tell us what you believe we are look for in a salesperson.

RON WILLINGHAM (Integrity Selling): First, people do not want to be sold, but they want to do business with people who will understand their needs and will partner with them and help them create some value for themselves. I think businesses, as an example, are looking for vendors to come in and to partner with them, to understand their business, understand what their objectives are, understand what their uniqueness is, and to say to them, `Here's how I can help you march along to reach some of your goals. Here's how I can help you increase your profitability, your productivity.'

And I think we, as individuals, are looking for the same thing. We're looking for people who are not just there to try to sell us something, but people who are there to understand our needs, to be sensitive to these needs, and to say to us, `We want to help you reach your objectives. We want to help you reach goals that you have.'

Let me give you an example.

I recently worked with a life insurance company, and we helped them change their whole mission statement.

Their mission statement had been, kind of paraphrased, that, `We sell life insurance and investment products.' And we helped them change their mission statement to say that, `We help people set and achieve financial goals.' See the difference? One is very product-focused, one is very customer-needs focused.

And I believe that sophisticated consumers today, who are being bombarded with advertisement about all kinds of products and services, and who have options that they've never had before--we have low prices and we have lots of different kinds of options--I believe these people are beginning to say that, `I'm going to spend my money with people who are interested in me, who really care about me, who are honest, who have integrity and who are going to try to understand and fill my needs.' And so clearly, that's one way that consumers are changing today, and one way that selling is having to change today to meet the needs of these consumers.