Next Public QBS Event: May 3-4th

Twice per year (in Atlanta) Tom Freese hosts an open enrollment QBS Methodology Summit that serves as a boot-camp style introduction to some participants, while serving as a QBS refresher to others. We will have a full day of training on Thursday May 3rd, and then finish by 1:00pm on Friday May 4th, so people can easily travel back to their respective home bases.

Registration for this event will begin approximately 8 weeks in advance of the event dates so look for a posting on the QBS website. Early enrollment is $595 versus the standard $750 tuition the week of the event. The last four open enrollment events have been completely SOLD OUT so I recommend you make a note to secure your reservations early.

Please call our office with questions at (770) 840-7640. 

Feedback from January Summit

“This training wasn’t just theory. We heard specific examples and I really liked this aspect of it.”

“The QBS training was more precise with specific tips, not just the generic information I’ve gotten with other programs.”

“Gold Medals vs. German Shepherds is a technique I learned that was a favorite that I know will make a big impact on my sales moving forward.”

“Very different and beneficial approach to selling. I loved the conversational layering model.”

“This was by far the best training I’ve attended.”

“I enjoyed the training very much! I truly feel I will benefit from this experience/training.”

“The QBS methodology suits my selling style far better than any other training I’ve taken. “

“I feel I learned a lot about cold calling techniques that will really help me.”

“The strategy that I believe was my favorite and that will prove to be the most helpful is leaving effective voice mails to increase call backs.”

“I rated this class and the instructor all 10’s!”

2012 January QBS Summit: January 5-6

“There has never been a better time for sellers to do everything possible to make themselves invaluable to their customers, colleagues, and their company.”         -T. Freese

We are very pleased to announce our next QBS Summit! If you would like to renew your focus on increasing your own sales effectiveness or give your entire sales team an unfair advantage over the competition, join us on January 5 - 6 for the 2012 January QBS Summit.

The boot-camp style event, featuring QBS Research founder Tom Freese in Atlanta and will be held on Thursday, January 5th and Friday, January 6th.

The learning environment will be highly interactive, with participants from a variety of industries including technology, financial services, healthcare, consulting, insurance, real estate, manufacturing, advertising, hospitality, and retail, and feedback from previous QBS Summit events has been “off the charts.”

With limited seating, reserve your seats early since we are expecting a full house. You might also want to bring extra pencils and a stack of writing pads for note taking.

“Tom! I wanted to thank you for an amazing training two weeks ago-my head is still spinning from all of the great info. I met with our Regional Manager yesterday and he wants you to train the rest of our team. You will be hearing from us very soon…”    -Liz B., Michigan…your newest QBS groupie!

Click for Early Enrollment Discount &  SUMMIT DETAILS.

QBS has Finally Gone Social…!!!

"Tom, is there a forum where devoted readers of your books, QBS advocates, or students of the Question Based Selling methodology can confer, collaborate, and share their experiences in using the QBS Methodology?"

To date, my answer to questions like these has been, "That’s a great idea, if I had the time and know-how to make it happen. Well, just last week I received an unsolicited email from a dedicated QBS’er who has created a Alumni Group on LinkedIn specifically for QBS Alumni (readers & students). It is definitely true that some of the best implementation ideas over my last 14+ years of teaching QBS have come from students of QBS, especially since they are on the front lines of the sale and interface directly with clients.

To add value, I will commit to logging on at least once a week to answer questions and offer insight. Bottom line, if you are willing to invest the time and effort to share your experiences with others, then I am too.

A well-deserved shout out goes to John Rhind for making this happen. Thank you, John, and I hope this is the beginning of a very productive (and much needed) tool for furthering your results with the QBS methodology.

To join the QBS Alumni Group on LinkedIn, simply click Here.

Audio Book—Sell Yourself First

Ranked #20 on NY Times Best Selling Audios as of June 24th, check out TF’s new book on tape: Sell Yourself First. Narrated by the author himself, Tom’s fifth and latest work further expands the Question Based Selling, as a direct commentary on the fact that the perception customers form about you is often more important than the product you’re selling or the company you represent.

Just look around any company and you will notice that some salespeople are more effective than others, even though they are all selling the same types of products. If you could somehow put your finger on what makes them consistently more effective, that insight alone would give you an unfair advantage over the competition.

For more information about ordering the audio version of Sell Yourself First, simply click here.

Tom’s New Book is Now Available!

“Brilliant! Selling yourself is indeed the most critical element in every sales effort.”       
—Simon Leslie, Founding Partner & Publishing Director, Ink Publishing

“When one of our strategic partners recently introduced us to Tom Freese and the Question Based Selling Methodology, the feedback from my entire team was literally ‘off the charts’ positive. Tom’s philosophy and strategies for selling are right on the money!”   
—Shane McNamera, General Manager, CDW

“Customers build relationships with people, not companies. Sell Yourself First cracks the code on how to convey maximum value in today’s highly competitive business environment. This book is a must read for anyone who sells competitive products or services!”   
—R. Barry Jones, VP of Investments, Merrill Lynch

When Penguin Publishing offered up a $50K advance to publish my new book, “Sell Yourself First”, my first thought was, “Cool!” The past nine months have since been hectic in preparation for the release of what essentially is a counter-cultural examination of how one’s selling effectiveness is more dependent on the individual salesperson than ever before.

In short, the customer’s perception of one salesperson’s value over another’s will likely be the tiebreaker in highly competitive markets moving forward.

Let’s say you represent a viable company. So do your competitors. I’m guessing you also represent leading products and services. If you sell in a competitive environment, it should be assumed that your competition can produce similarly impressive marketing materials about the value of their offerings.

Hence, the thing your competition really lacks is YOU!

The new playing field in sales is your ability to demonstrate a host of highly intangible qualities like value, experience, vision, creativity, clarity, integrity, competence, and industry knowledge.

Just having good intentions is no longer enough in the competitive selling arena. Your ability to demonstrate these intangible qualities, more than the competition will likely determine your success moving forward.

To illustrate, chapter one in the book is appropriately titled, “The Elephant in the Room.” What does that mean? In sales, the elephant in the room is customer skepticism. Most sellers just pretend it doesn’t exist, and then gleefully proceed with some version of their sales pitch. However, if we inject even just a dose of reality into the equation, the salesperson’s job becomes so much easier if they simply acknowledge what the customer is already thinking.

For example, a salesperson might say: “Mr. Customer, I know there are a number of other providers running around pitching various solutions, to the point where the industry has become a little ‘used-car-ish’. What these folks are NOT talking about, however, is the fact that there is a problem in the world of (insert your industry). With so many vendors making contradictory claims, it has become very difficult for customers to know what their options really are, how their business would be impacted, and the associated costs. Would it be valuable for me to pull back the curtains and give you the straight scoop on this?”

Verbally acknowledging the ‘elephant in the room’ is very different than just being another walking, talking billboard, schilling a product or service, don’t you think?

“Tom Freese has the ability to cut through all the distractions to identify the real value proposition in the customer’s mind. In doing so, he helped us turn a commodity service into an unmatched personal experience. The effect on sales has been spectacular.”                        
—Robert M. Pirnie, President and CEO, Conference America, Inc.

“Tom’s logical approach to the strategic sale quickly helped my team overcome the ingrained skepticism veteran salespeople often have toward standard training courses. Our return on investment was just what I expected—more pipeline, more in-depth client interactions and bigger deals.”    —Chuck Harris, Global Productivity Manager, EMC

“Your Next Job Interview”

Chapter 2 in my new book, Sell Yourself First, is appropriately entitled, “Your Next Job Interview.” I know for a fact after teaching this material for the last 8 months that it has already helped countless people who are in the job market, but that’s not really the purpose of the chapter.

Can we agree that a job interview is a sales situation, where qualified candidates will ultimately be trying to sell themselves to prospective employers? Well, it turns out that every sales call is also a job interview, where the prospect or customer is not only evaluating your products and services, they’re also evaluating you. You are indeed selling yourself…all the time!

That said, what if we discovered that how most people sell naturally is upside down and backward from how most customers make purchase decisions? That’s right! The natural tendency during a job interview (or on a sales call) is to try and put your best foot forward, right?

Well, at some point in the job interview scenario, the hiring manager is going to say, “Tell me about yourself.” During a sales call, the customer may say, “Tell me about your product.” Basically, it’s the same request, because even if you are selling a product or service, you are also selling yourself…FIRST!

Thus, the job interview scenario becomes the perfect metaphor for selling (anything) because it’s the pure sale. In essence, a qualified candidate is solely responsible for selling themselves, and they are also the product that’s being offered. At that point, your success is completely up to you.

Most people respond to this initial request to, “Tell me about yourself,” by basically throwing up on the customer. Unfortunately, the natural tendency is to rattle off and/or reiterate many of the key points already listed on the resume in the hopes of saying something that will connect with the decision maker.

What employers really want to know about you, however, is all of the things that are not actually listed on your resume. For example, are you a competent, confident, creative, easy to work with, respectful, experienced, thought leader in your chosen field?

That’s the trick—these qualities cannot be claimed by you without sounding arrogant. Instead, they have to be demonstrated, which is a function of simply implementing the techniques outlined in Sell Yourself First.

Truth be known, you’re probably not the only candidate (or vendor) who’s competing for the opportunity to sell yourself to the interviewer (i.e. customer). It’s more likely that you are competing against a handful of equally qualified candidates who will also be quick to highlight all their accomplishments as well.

That’s why the tradition approach to interviewing (or selling a product) actually put you at a competitive disadvantage. If you sound the same as everyone else, you forfeit your competitive edge.

Now that you’ve invested four years and thousands of dollars to earn a college degree, are you willing to spend less than the cost of a half tank of gasoline, and invest a couple hours of study and comprehension to give yourself an ‘unfair’ competitive advantage and transform the entire rest of your professional career?

Think about it this way: The employer is going to hire someone, it might as well me you. Your resume’ (or product information) just gets you in the door. Your ability to more effectively position yourself than the competition is ultimately how you will win the opportunity! At that point, it all comes down to superior technique and a sound positioning strategy. This book will change the way you communicate with others, and more importantly, it will change the way others perceive and deal with you!

January Go Magazine: The Centerfold!

This month’s issues of Go Magazine, Air Tran’s in-flight publication, features a two page spread of yours truly. After training the sales tea of the magazine’s publisher in London back in October, one thing led to another and now I get to watch other passengers read about me on my flight tomorrow to DC. Very cool, and hopefully informative. Check it out for yourself HERE.

NEW: QBS Positioning Assessment

By popular demand, we are now offering a new product on the QBS menu of services—basically, a Positioning Assessment. It’s usually true that a solution or presentation sounds great to the person who authored the slides. But, how does your value proposition really stack up in reality? It doesn’t do companies much good to discover (after the fact) that their messages are being positioned in a way that could actually erode your credibility or commoditize your value proposition.

“Ironically, Question Based Selling solves the problem that traditional sales training programs have created."

Q: What exactly is a Positioning Assessment?

Depending on the client, initiative, or impending project, a positioning assessment can range from a short 30 minute free initial consultation to an in-depth examination of how your messages resonate in the current competitive marketplace.

Common areas of focus include:

- Setting the bar too high for the competition, and plant a couple land mines in the process.

- Trade Show Strategies: How to get more leads and create a greater sense of urgency.

- Does your story build to a crescendo, where customers will “want to” take action?

- Identifying risky buzzwords or catch phrases that put people off

The bad news is, the way most sellers have been taught for decades does more to commoditize their value than differentiate it. The traditional ‘elevator pitch,” for example, is virtually identical between competing companies, which is exactly the opposite of what sellers are trying to accomplish.

More information available HERE, or contact us for information on dates, availability, and deliverables.

Go Magazine: I’m the centerfold?

Check out the Jan issue of Go Magazine, Air Tran’s in-flight publication. After training In Publishing’s sales team (the magazine’s publisher) in London back in October, one thing led to another and I am now being featured on a two page spread in the January issue on pages 90 – 91.

Tomorrow, I get to watch other passengers read about me on my flight to DC. Very cool, and hopefully informative. Check it out for yourself HERE.