January 12, 2023

A Conversation with Lee Salz

49 minutes

Lee Salz is a sales management strategist and author of several books including Sell Different! and Sales Differentiation which helps sellers win more deals at the prices they want. Lee discusses why this is important especially when the differences between your product and the competitor's product are very slim.

Lee explains that how you sell is equally important as what you sell, if not more so. He shares how to sell to decision influencers, as well as the reasons why top sellers put their buyer's needs before their own. Lee also digs into the buying experience and how to ask horizontal and vertical questions during discovery.

HIGHLIGHT QUOTES

Create a matrix of outcomes to guide discovery meetings - Lee: "You reverse engineer the meeting and you start by asking yourself this question, 'It was a great meeting if I accomplished what?' Identify the outcomes that would make for a great discovery meeting. And if you think of it in terms of a matrix, the left-hand column, here are the desired outcomes."

"The subsequent columns are, what am I going to ask? What am I going to say? What am I gonna do before, during, and after the meeting to achieve each one of those desired outcomes? So what questions am I gonna ask? Only the ones that correlate with the outcomes on my list."

Horizontal and vertical questions for discovery - Lee: "Horizontal questions parallel the scanning process. They're scan questions, they're superficial questions to acquire some data points. But that's what the dentist is doing when he is going tooth by tooth, he's scanning. But then when the hook sticks, that's when the analysis happens and we don't do that enough. And that's what I refer to as vertical questions. Getting a complete picture, a 360-degree picture of that particular data point. A lot of times I see salespeople ask questions for one reason. You know what that is, Andy? To have something to write down."

Skills practice may seem like a drag but it is necessary - Lee: "Love me on payday. Love me when you make President's Club just like mom and dad made you eat your vegetables. That's what sales management needs to do with their salespeople and make sure skill practice is happening religiously."

Find out more about Lee and get his books in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leesalz/

Website: http://selldifferentbook.com/