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The Sales Training Series: Gaining Commitment

Always Have a Commitment Objective! 

Our recent research shows that nearly 80% of salespeople do not understand what 
their primary purpose is. Your principle mission in sales is to Gain Commitment. 
The confusion stems from the variety of tasks we as salespeople are asked to perform. 
The end result is that 62% of salespeople make calls where there is no attempt at 
Gaining Commitment. 

One of the most important reasons why this occurs is most salespeople do not establish 
what we call a Commitment Objective for every sales call. This is the number one mistake 
that all salespeople make. Well, it's time to change that!

Commitment Objective: A goal we set for ourselves to gain agreement from the customer 
that moves the sales process forward.

No sales call should ever be made without a Commitment Objective. If you do not have a 
Commitment Objective firmly planted in your mind, you will wind up being one of those 62% 
that don't ask for Commitment.

In The Field:

Newly hired salespeople at Melody Inc., a Muzak Franchise, are required to make sales calls 
with veteran salespeople. Toward the end of one recent call, the prospect asked the veteran 
if he could keep the company brochure and share it with his partner. 
The veteran was happy to comply and began to pack up his briefcase.

The newly hired salesperson had recently gone through the Action Selling Sales Training 
Program and learned about how to reach a Commitment Objective. 
She decided that it would make sense to capitalize on the prospect's interest and schedule 
the next logical step - a proposal meeting. So she said, "As a next step I would recommend 
that we plan another meeting with yourself and your partner. We will prepare a proposal that 
documents what we have discussed and the solution we recommend. How does that sound?"

You guessed it. They scheduled a proposal meeting for a week later. During the next meeting 
they Gained Commitment for the business.




About the author:
Duane Sparks is chairman and founder of The Sales Board, a Minneapolis-based Sales Training 
Company that has trained and certified more than 200,000 salespeople in Action Selling.




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