Of the various steps in the selling process, the most important is identifying the needs of customers or prospects. No single part of the process deserves more of your attention and study. Your ability to discover and interpret the needs of others is vital to your success. Careful! Don’t brush this off as an elaboration on the obvious. Human needs, complex as they can be, are the motivators of all human behavior. You can’t know too much about this subject. A few minutes of reading here will reveal essentials of the needs mechanisms. This will help you immeasurably in your

If you believe that American innovation will continue to provide us with world leadership, don’t be too sure. American industry is facing a double whammy: Innovations from abroad are increasing rapidly, and our own made-in-America corporate misbehavior kills off ideas that should happen but won’t happen — ever. As a manufacturers’ representative, why should this be important to you? It is because you need to focus on the organizational mechanisms that can defeat the ideas you propose to customers and prospects.

Our systems defeat many of the ideas created by our most brilliant Americans. Among them are salespeople, engineers of … Read the rest