Gitomer's Wrong about "Basics" - Why that's a straw man

I read various "sales gurus" on a regular basis, mostly to see if there's anything new under the sun, and most of the time, there isn't.

Today, though, I have to disagree with one of the best known of them, Jeffery Gitomer, who writes that "the basics are over!"

It's a semantic cheap trick -labeling what's wrong and manipulative about selling (like cold-calling and the tie-down and other closes) as "back to the basics" and setting up his approach as "fundamentals" instead.

Of course there are many traditional practices in sales that don't work well now, if they ever did. 

Cold calling a large list of strangers with no idea who they are, for instance, is just bad practice.  It reliably does several things:

• Annoys most people getting the calls
• Hurts branding of integrity or professionalism
• Makes salespeople asked to do this hate their jobs

Unfortunately, it probably works about one time in a thousand, so that variable reinforcement principle that kept Skinner's rats pressing the bar and keeps people playing games of chance keeps the cold calls happening.

Instead of cold calling many, a better idea is to "warm call" those you have reason to believe may have a problem you can help them solve.  That's basic, today, and it was basic years ago.  Cold calling isn't a basic, it's just a bad idea.

Closing is another practice that's just very outdated.  It doesn't work, and instead, it

• Manipulates the buyer into the decision you want
• Undoes trust by exerting manipulative pressure
• Betrays a seller attitude that they buyer is "prey."

Like cold-calling, it probably works just often enough to keep some people trying it.

Instead of closing, the fundamental attitude of helping the buyer make a good decision, based on really understanding the buyer's wants and needs and proposing real help, means that there aren't any tricks to selling. 

Selling is a high-integrity activity of discovering a genuine need, and helping the buyer who has the need get it satisfied. 

The approach that Gitomer mis-labels as "back to basics" of pitching at large numbers of strangers, arguing objections away, and tricky closing techniques just doesn't work.  It doesn't fit the way people want to buy today, and it doesn't fit how most entrepreneurs and salespeople can (or should) sell.

That's not "back to basics."

This week, the sales micro-seminar series begins again, with "Filling Your Sales Funnel" - and it's about what really is basic and fundamental about how to sell with high integrity. 

At the micro-seminar, people will learn (or re-learn) some fundamentals about how to identify potential new customers, how to research whether a need probably exists and who has that need, and how to start the discovery process and get acquainted with potential new customers.

When people sell to meet needs, after understanding those needs and the full situation of the buyer, the only question necessary to confirm commitment (NOT "close"!!) is: "What do you want to do now?"