Business Exchange

HATTIE: What is integrity selling?

RON WILLINGHAM: Integrity selling simply means bringing integrity to the selling process. Integrity means to integrate the inner with the outer or to become centered or to be integrated.

We have a six-step system of doing integrity selling. The six steps are: ?(1) approach, to gain rapport with people;?(2) interview, to identify their needs, ?(3) demonstrate, to show how we can fill the needs, ?(4) validate in order to show or prove our claims, show our product will fill the needs,?(5) negotiate, to work out problems that keep people from buying, and then we?(6) close; we simply ask for a decision.

The way integrity selling differs from traditional selling is that there's no selling effort up front. In other words, we approach people and gain trust and rapport with them before ever initiating any selling activity. And then we interview to identify their needs, to understand their situation, understand the problems that they have, that they want filled. And we get agreement that they do have needs that they want filled, that they do have problems they want solved, and that they do have things--needs or wants that they want satisfied. And so once we get this commitment, then we show or tell how our products and service will fill the needs that have already been admitted.

It's totally different than traditional selling, as we've been taught many years ago, where the salesperson went in and did tricky demonstrations, did most of the talking, very glibly played a chess game with someone.

In integrity selling, in the first two steps, the approach and interview steps, we do 20 percent of the talking and 80 percent of the listening.

Our whole process is built on asking the right questions, asking questions that draw people out. We need to get them talking, get them discovering their needs, telling us what their needs are, and admitting a desire for a solution. It's at that point that we begin some selling activity. So that's how selling has changed.

That's how integrity selling works. And in a sense, that's what integrity selling is.