Industrial selling is different than retail sales and other business to business selling.  Selling heavy equipment is different than selling whole life.  Selling cell phone or financial services is different than selling a package sorting device, a rock crushing plant, or a conveyor maintenance or millwright service contract.  The fundamentals of selling are the same.  The application of the knowledge is different. 

Sales cycle times are longer.  Major accounts and national accounts have multiple operations and corporate offices spread across many sales territories.  Industries are consolidating.  Larger companies are getting even larger.  Smaller companies are being acquired and integrated into larger ones. 

Can you relate to some of these comments?
 
The “gatekeeper” is no longer just an unfriendly receptionist or secretary!  Now, it may be a vendor reduction policy or a supply contract requirement. 

Where are the “decision makers”?  They’re hard to come by!  The decision maker today is very likely to be a cross functional team of purchasing, operations, engineering, and maintenance staff.  I’m selling to all of them at the same time and they all have different agendas! 

My product is still important.  So is the price. But what about safety?  What about liability?  I may be eliminated as a supplier because my competitor can provide a larger range of products and services.

We lost money on the job because the salesman didn’t tell us we needed a special power adapter! 

I set up another distributor in the area.  They told me about all of the volume they could get me.  But my total sales into the market aren’t really much different. 

INDUSTRIAL SELLING SKILLS focuses on providing solid selling skills to compliment product and industry knowledge.  Then we apply these skills in the context of industrial selling.