The Hindu Business Line : The DELTA process

Your ability to facilitate the conversation, advance your ideas, or sell a product or service is directly related to how well you stimulate thinking in the other person, says Jerry Acuff in Stop Acting Like a Seller and Start Thinking L ike a Buyer ( www.wiley.com). To do so, you must use words and language that resonate with your prospects and customer, rather than repel them, he advises. “Words matter! Your ability to create a low pressure and safe environment with words and language that mix the right amount of logic and emotion is crucial to your sales success.”

Customers need us to find words that resonate and bring our ideas to life, urges Acuff. “If we do not bring our ideas to life with worlds that resonate, the customer may never be able to verify our hypothesis, no matter how solid it is.” The book advocates DELTA as an effective sales process comprising five steps, viz. develop prospective customers’ interest so they are willing to hear your out; engage customers in a meaningful dialogue; learn the prospect’s situation/problem/challenge; tell your story; and ask for a commitment, if appropriate. The E and L - that is, engage customers and learn their situation - are interconnected, explains Acuff. Without meaningful dialogue, which is “an adult discussion of the truth or a free flow of meaning,” there may be order-taking but no sales conversation, he says. “It is not one person talking and the other listening politely. It is having a meaningful conversation with customers about their companies, their industry, or themselves.”

Packed with practical takeaways.

D. Murali

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com

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