Marketing Aquaculture Products — 1

have actually given them my number and
told the competitor to call me and get my
opinion of their services. Th ey say, “Call
Jeff ery Gitomer and explain it to him. If he
thinks it’s OK, he’ll tell us.” Will your
clients do that if your competitor calls
them? What are you doing to ensure it?
“5. Establish common ground. If both like
golf or have kids, issues and things in
common that will draw us closer.
“6. Gain confi dence. Once you motivate
them to act, you’d better have built enough
confi dence to buy, or they’ll buy from
someone else.
“7. Have fun and be funny. Have a great
time. If you can make prospects laugh, you
can make them buy. Laughter is tacit
approval. Tacit approval leads to
contractual approval.
“7.5 Never, get caught selling. It makes me
mad when a salesperson sounds like a
salesperson. Learn the science and convert
it into an art.”
Gitomer is staunch advocate of asking questions
of others as well as yourself in all phases
of market research, sales planning and sales.
Th e chapter in his book is called “Th e Book of
Questions” and centers around an informed
technique of asking and answering questions.
He says this is the heart of any sales presentation
that establishes buyer confi dence. He
prefaces it by saying, “Without questions you’ll
have no answers; without answers’ you’ll have
no sales; without sales, you’ll have no money…
Any questions?” He goes on to say, “Questions
are to sales as breath is to life. If you fail to ask
them, you will die. If you ask them incorrectly,
your death won’t be immediate, but inevitable.
If you ask them correctly, the answer is a sale.”
He says the overall approach sounds simple, but
it is not. You need to do an eff ective job asking
the right questions and an equally eff ective job
listening to the client’s answers and following
up with another question that dovetails into
the critical needs of the client. And of course,
“Never get caught selling,” but that is not a
problem if you understand how to structure
your questions.
Gitomer built upon and credits a technique
from Ray Leone’s Success Secrets of the Sales
Funnel. Th ere are three stages to the process.
First stage: Make a factual statement than can’t
be refuted. Second stage: Make a personal
observation that refl ects you experience and
creates credibility. Th e third stage is to ask an
open-ended question that incorporates the fi rst
two stages. With this technique, you will be
awkward at fi rst, but with a little practice, perhaps
in simple conversation with your friends
and family, you can easily master it.
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