If selling is your profession, you probably look at me in awe when I say that it is possible to make a sale without closing because all this while, you have been conditioned to go for the close. In fact, ‘closing’ is a part of the sales training. Many sales experts wrote about this in countless bestsellers. But this is about to change.

I have involved in selling for over a decade now. I sell for the Pharmaceutical industry, and I am comfortable with it. That explains why I stick around that long. During that period, I was exposed to various training under different companies. Each company has it own emphasize and model. For example, during my earlier days selling, I was trained with ‘Gordon-Relationship’ model, and later, under another company, I went through ‘One Minute Sales Person’ training.

And closing came under different name: getting commitment, seal the deal, etc. Personally though, I feel that nothing come close to the model which I come across in my second year
selling. The model was presented in a published book with the title ‘Newsell’.

Since salespeople have varied educational backgrounds, experience levels, learning abilities, and so forth, they also have their own training needs.

The four stage of this cycle, preparation, development, maturity, and decline, can be described as follows:

1. Preparation is the first stage in a sales person’s career.

2. Development, the second stage, occurs when a new salesperson’s productivity begins to risk.

3. Maturity occurs when a salesperson’s productivity begins to level off.

These are the times that try retailers’ souls. Unemployment is at a 14-year high, consumer confidence is at an all-time low, and the stock market has yet to mellow out. If you own a retail store, you’re not sure what sales numbers to expect this holiday season. Should the stronger-than-expected Black Friday sales give you hope that holiday goodwill could trump the much-vaunted bad economy and surprise savvy retailers with a healthy (if not spectacular) shopping season? Or will shoppers stay away from stores now that the Black Friday deals have come and gone?