Selling is not an unskilled occupation. Today, there are 204 identified skilled competencies in 31 categories in the five major segments of the sales process. Skills specific to the profession of selling have evolved over time. Twelve "Models of Selling" are summarized below, beginning with some of the first models. Each new selling skills model was influenced by changes occurring in the selling environment.

Make it a point to keep on the lookout for novel and interesting ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you are currently working on.
- Thomas Edison

PERSONAL PREPARATION MODELS
Sales Professionals hear the word "no" more often in a single month than most people in other occupations do in a lifetime. Winning the mental game of selling is crucial.

1. 5-P Sales Model: This basic model was defined as "Product Pushing through Personality, Persistence and Price." This was the land of the "born salesman." These people had an engaging personality and tenacious persistence. With a low price and playing a simple numbers game, they could make sales. Even today, people wake up in the morning and decide to go into selling with few or no skills. For them, mental conditioning is essential.

2. Mental Conditioning Sales Model: When sales people lose their excitement and enthusiasm for what they sell, their prospects respond similarly. Mental conditioning is to selling as physical conditioning is to sports. Significant advancements have been made from the short-lived motivation sessions. Today Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Psychological Kinesiology and other methods are available to build stamina.

INTERPERSONAL SKILLS MODELS
Relationships are extremely important in most selling. Understanding the customer's interaction style will prevent miscommunication.

3. Relationship Sales Model: This model was based on building a relationship by calling on the same prospect repeatedly over an extended period of time. The salesperson and the buyer got to know each other better on both professional and personal levels. At the core of this model is the ability to cross boundaries, but not violate them.

4. Personality Styles Sales Model: The importance of relationships in selling fostered the use of psychological assessment instruments to identify key personality characteristics. Based on the recognition that different personality types prefer their own particular style of interaction, this model provides structure to the interaction and relationship building components of selling.

PRESENTATION BASED MODELS
Focus is on using the presentation portion of the sales interaction to do the actual selling.

5. Closing Sales Model: Introduced in the 1950's, heavy emphasis was placed on presentation skills, trial closing and overcoming objections, then going for the final major closing sequence. In its pure form, this model was, and still is today, most commonly used in high-pressure sales.

6. Problem Solving Sales Model: In the early 1960's, Sales Professionals were taught to ask open and closed-ended questions to probe for problems. Once discovered, solutions were then presented. In today's highly competitive markets, this model tends to elicit the "price" objection.

7. Value-Added Sales Model: This model emerged in the late 1960's to counteract the tendency of the Problem Solving Model to cause the price objection to be raised. When the price objection is anticipated, incentives are "added on" to the basic product/service as a means to make up the difference in customer perceived value versus price.

8. Consultative Sales Model: This model was introduced in the early 1970's. The focus was to determine how the Sales Professional could lower the customer's operating costs and/or increase the customer's ability to generate revenues. This model requires that you have an extensive track record and strong proof of results. Consequently, it had limited application for new companies, new products or new services.

APPLICATIONS MODELS
Fully developed primarily during the 1980's in response to special selling situations and are more strategic in nature. They assume the person already knows how to sell.

9. Partnering Sales Model: The partnering model is not a "legal" partnership. Rather it is a part of the "Total Quality Management" process many U.S. companies are now pursuing. Partnering is usually done at the highest levels within the seller's and customer's organizations. To successfully partner, the Sales Professional must understand the needs of the "customer's customers." Collectively, the seller and customer build and exchange business plans related to the product/service specific areas.

10. Team Selling Model: Although it has been around for many years, it is just now becoming popular with sales organizations. This process involves a number of people at various levels and specialties interacting with a similar group at the same level and specialty in the prospect company. The Sales Professional is primarily engaged in a communications coordinating "quarterback" role. Roles, boundaries, authorities, procedures and communications are paramount knowledge and skills for this model.

11. Complex Sales Model: Long lead times and big ticket items, coupled with multiple decision makers, both internal and external to the client company, i.e., banks, citizens groups, governments, etc., characterize the profile of a selling organization utilizing the "complex sales model." The primary focus of this model is to define the strategic approach to the account.

VALUE SELLING MATRIX MODELS
In a value selling process the actual selling is done during the diagnostic interview phase of the sales interaction, rather than the traditional presentation phase. All value selling models are designed to prevent or significantly reduce price pressure.

12. Value Selling Model: This relatively new model introduced in the late 1980's was developed as the result of reduced product/service differentiation, competitor induced pressure on price, new products and services that have no track records, as well as, flatter organizations staffed with people who no longer have the time to listen to commercials (sales presentations).

The Value Selling Strategies P.R.O.S.P.E.C.T. Model^tm version uses an "irrefutable logic stream" so that proof is not used to make performance points. Additionally, this process sets the seller's unique and distinctive selling points as criteria to select a supplier in order to rule out the competition.

Which Model to Use: It should be clear that Sales Professionals must use a Personal Model and an Interpersonal Model as the foundation. If they sell in highly competitive markets and/or if they are opening new markets or introducing new or revised products/services, they will also need a Value Selling Model. Depending upon the selling environment, what and how they sell, they may also need one or more of the Applications Models

The quickest way to discover the model of selling you are currently using is by the objections you get. For example, if you get price objections, then you know that you are using a model that is pre-consultative selling. Or, if you have to add "give aways" in order to prevent the price objection, then you are in a Value-Added Model. If you encounter a lot of competitive pressure, then you are Pre-Partnering or Pre-Matrix Model. In selecting a sales training program, look at the types of objections you are getting, the type of selling you are doing and the product and service you are selling, then look for the model that will provide you with the greatest return on your investment.

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