Psychologists suggest that in the transaction of selling or buying, five essential steps must be taken by the sales professional. Sales professionals must understand each step, know how to accomplish the sequential objectives of each step, and know how to move the sales dialogue from one step to the next.

The five steps to selling are:

1.         Attention,

2.         Interest,

3.         Presentation,

4.         Desire,

5.         Close.

“Attention” means getting the prospect’s attention despite any distractions or preoccupation, so that the focus is on your product or service. Sales professionals need to identify polite, smooth phrases that can be used to grab a prospect’s attention and move the conversation to the more important second step, Interest.

Once Attention has been attained, your job is to identify the needs of the prospect or customer and determine whether you can address those needs. In the critical Interest step of the sales process, you must invest ample time, exploring the prospect’s or customer’s immediate needs and continual needs and the ways in which you can meet those needs.

The Interest step is the most important step to invest time in. This is the needs analysis phase of the conversational approach.. Ask thoughtful questions that stimulate informational responses from prospects or customers. Take notes  while the prospect is answering, so you can limit the number of interruptions. Some of the best Interest questions  are open-ended questions that stimulate dialogue between you and the prospect or customer. Asking open-ended questions encourages the customer to open up and provide you with a quantity of information.

Once you have identified the needs of the prospect via the Interest step, it’s time to make your best Presentation of the appropriate product or service for the customer. The Presentation is based upon the Claim + Feature + Benefit + Naildown sequence developed in Mini-Seminar 2. After the Presentation, move the sales conversation toward illustrating how the prospect or customer will benefit by proceeding with your recommendation. This helps to build a level of Desire within the customer for what you have to offer.

Sales professionals must understand how to ask for the order, or Close the sales process. This final step in the selling process depends on the ability and confidence of the sales professional. If you are spending undue time on this fifth step, you may not be investing enough time in step two, Interest.

The art of the Close is in  gauging the level of receptiveness to buying of the prospect or customer. Ask questions that allow you the flexibility  either to finalize the order or to digressing if necessary. Focus on two types of closing questions:

1.         Trial Closes are opinion-asking questions. They help you to determine the customer’s readiness  to making a buying decision. An example of a Trial Close is: “If you were to go with this style widget, would you want to place the order on account or pay cash?”

2.         The Order Close seeks a commitment from the prospect or customer. This Close question is used when you are confident that the prospect or customer is ready to take ownership of your product or service. An example of an Order Close is:

Every sales transaction involves all five selling steps. The sales professional must be able to gauge how much time to invest in each step, before moving to the next step.