Customer Reviews

High Probability Selling

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

High Probability Selling is, without a doubt, the best of the dozens of sales books I have read throughout the years. From the very beginning of the book, I found myself unable to put it down. It takes everything you have ever learned about the sales process and stands it on its head. The idea is to work only with those few people, businesses, prospects that are motivated to buy from you NOW. How? By following a carefully thought out and practiced method of disqualification. That's right. You try to disqualify every person you talk to. Those that are not disqualified, you have a high probability of doing business with. It sounds simple, but it isn't. Is it effective? I can tell you that it is. My sales increased immediately. And it's fun. It shows you how to get off your knees in the selling relationship and, respectfully, come from a position of strength. No more "hat in the hand" prospecting. I highly recommend it. But be prepared. It is a book that will rock you back on your heals a bit. You have to read it and then study it. Then try it. You'll like it

For most salespeople, why is selling such a painful experience? Probably because the way most people attempt to sell is just as painful for everyone else involved (notably prospects) as it is for them. Think about it. Do you resent what is called the "hard sell"? Are you less inclined to buy if you feel pressured? Have there been situations in your own experience when the pressure of a "hard sell" convinced you NOT to buy what you had intended to? These and other issues are addressed in High Probability Selling, co-authored by Jacques Werth & Nicholas E. Ruben. In effect, they challenge most (if not all) of the traditional assumptions about the cultivation/solicitation process. They create a fictitious salesman and then, using him as their focal point, demonstrate the principles of high probability selling. The co-authors do agree with traditional thinking on at least one point: Sales is a numbers game. The question to consider is this: At which point in the cultivation/solicitation process should the probability of a sale be measured? Stated another way, at which point in this process should most time and effort be allocated? Conventional thinking offers quite different answers than do Werth & Ruben. Read High Probability Selling and then determine for yourself which answers make more sense.

I've been "selling" for about 6 years. I was even trained in "how to train people to sell." I have, since reading this book, changed my philosophy about selling. This book made me realize that my time is just as important as my client's time, and in some cases, more important than my prospect's time. It made me re-evaluate my product and boosted my confidence in it ten fold. I have increased my closing ratio from 1/10 to 2/3, and I've got a lot more free time. Read this book and you will see how. Some of the situations probably should not be practiced verbatum. Use your best judgment. Overall it is a welcome eye-opener!

This is great for situations where the customer knows what their needs and wants are and can act on them. It also is great for establishing clear rules of engagement with customers. It is direct and to-the-point. The material is POORLY delivered yet can be understood with multiple reads and with some in-depth thought. No doubt that this stuff will get you off your knees and prevent you from begging, BUT it is not SPIN or Solution Selling, this stuff will not work if you customer does not know or realize his needs. Is there value in creating needs? This is not "creating demand," it is setting up clear roads to enganement beyond building up the pain to act on their needs, and doing it in a respectful way. This is great for closing on demand, NOT for creating demand, which is what solution selling is all about. This book has changed the way I sell for the better, I now choose either to "create a need," "walk away," or "close on their needs." One must think before they act on this material.

High Probability Selling is one of the more unique sales books both in its presentation and content. The book uses a conversational format between different "characters" to explain a variety of selling concepts. The basic premise of the authors is that "traditional" selling techniques of the past were focused on getting the prospect to buy through whatever means necessary - convincing, persuading or even pressuring. According to Werth and Ruben, the paradigm shifts with High Probability Selling from "getting the prospect to buy to determining whether there is a mutually acceptable basis for doing business and, if not, to go your separate ways."

The basic philosophy of the authors is that you should only spend time, money, and effort on prospects where there is a high probability for a sale. They contend that most sellers waste a lot of time on too many of the wrong prospects, which leaves less time to spend on good selling opportunities. Instead of looking at every prospect as a potential sale, therefore, you should initially look for opportunities to "disqualify" prospects early and often. The result, they claim, will be less resistance by prospects, less rejection for you and more time spent on high quality prospects, thus resulting in more sales.

In the final analysis, High Probability Selling, offers a straightforward, efficient way to sell that is neither dishonest or manipulative. For those sellers who frequently prospect or "cold call" over the phone, the prospecting section offers a more unique approach to traditional selling that may result in less call reluctance/rejection and perhaps less resistance on the part of the prospect. This selling methodology, however, seems to be better suited for those sellers who have a large number of prospects and less complex sales. Sellers who sell in major account situations with only a few prospects, high-ticket items, long sales cycles or multiple buyers, would most likely find this selling process quite difficult to apply.

Robert Reed
President
TrustBuild

A Review From Someone Who Has Used and Trained HPS
Reviewer: Neil Myers from Yonkers, NY United States
Let me nail my colors to the mast: I am a senior trainer with HPS and I've used HPS in the real world. Unlike some other competitors, who write reviews posing as "unbiased" reviewers I will admit that I believe HPS to be the best selling system out there. That is why I train it. I am biased because I believe it is the best.
It is unlikely that you will be able to transform your selling just by reading the book. There are key advances and elaborations that you only get on the training course. However, the book is a great primer and sets the tone for the course. It also outlines the selling philosphy.

HPS is largely misunderstood by its critics and feared by its competitors. Our PhD reviewer has no understanding at all that HPS comes from an utterly different sales paradigm. He is trying to fit its message within his own limited understanding. Jacques Werth discovered, by painstaking research, over more than 20 years, that the top 1% of sales people do not for the most part, sell like the rest. HPS is based upon how the top performers do what they do, not based on a series of outdated myths or a re-hash of old selling fantasies and legends.

Basically Werth found that trying to persuade "interested" people to buy is an inefficient way of selling in the current age. HPS sells without using persuasion. The arm chair theorists cannot accept this. Many of our highly successful students know otherwise.

Unlike some "expert" reviewers, Jacques Werth put his money where his mouth is by using HPS to turn around failing companies, which he did in many industries, many times. Now, if you are going to make your living by turning failure into success you better make make sure your methods work. HPS does and that is why JW became a rich man. His best students are doing pretty well also.

HPS is a purely pragmatic series of methods and practices based on an utterly different concept of sales from the conventional one. HPS methods work and we have many statistics to prove they work, in the real world, but I will admit they are not in the book.

Wagner is a competitor of HPS and has copied many elements of it. However, he has a fundamental misunderstanding of HPS prospecting (and other aspects of HPS too) because basically he has never done it for any extended period of time. Wagner is a tinkerer and has difficulty following a system. HPS is learned by doing, not by theorizing. He thinks our methods are "robotic" because of his lack of experience in using them for himself. He also confuses selling and marketing a common failing in the world of sales theorists.

If you are a salesperson or manager and you listen to these wrong headed and fundamentally ignorant reviewers you may dismiss a method that if properly adopted, will increase your sales, closing ratios, profitability and as a bonus make you feel like an ethical and honorable individual in your role as a salesperson.

HPS has a website and forum where you can ask questions:

www.highprobsell.com

Hope to see you there.

Neil Myers

Unabashed HPS Trainer

Let me preface my comments by stating that, in addition to reading the book, I have participated in an HPS prospecting seminar, only. I will do my best to confine my comments to that with which I am familiar.

As for the pluses of High Probability Selling: I have little to add to what has already been said, other than it outlines an approach that is at once easy (be totally honest, straightforward, and genuine) and hard (be totally honest, straightforward, and genuine), particularly if you report to a manager who subscribes to 'alternative' methods.

With respect to the minuses: My main criticism of HPS, the book - which is somewhat trifling - is not the parable format (though not my preference, business fables were hot at the time, and continue to be popular), but the utter rosiness of the tale. With few exceptions, everything magically falls into place for the protagonist, Salvatore Esman (code for, 'Salesman' for those not hip to the moniker), and his cohorts.

For a work that advocates Keeping It Real, I found this aspect of the book somewhat incongruous. If I could take away a half, rather than whole star, for this perceived shortcoming, I would.

As for the HPS method - which most reviewers appear to be critiquing, rather than the text - I challenge the assertion that HPS is a feel-good system in which salespeople mitigate the pain of rejection by only engaging prospects who don't say no.

If anything, HPS is rejection-seeking, as refusal is the mark of low-probability, time-wasting prospects. In any case, one can safely say that HPS is confrontational, in the sense that practitioners actively and repeatedly confirm whether or not prospects want the components of their offering. Though HP salespeople never ask for the order, they are effectively closing throughout the entire sales process. This is hardly rejection-avoidant behavior.

If I understand correctly, while they do not hope for it, HP salespeople welcome rejection, as it signals a suspect's status as a low-probability prospect, at the present time. Rejection is the saleperson's cue to move on and return to the prospect later, with a different offer.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the author's provocative claims, or finds that HPS is well or poorly suited to their product, I think all can agree that a person's definition of Selling, and their assumptions about prospects and the buying process, have important implications.

On that basis alone, this book is worth reading.

I went back and forth for some time before submitting this review, but after reading some of Mr. Wagner's other reviews of various books and authors (primarily in sales and marketing) I felt motivated to publish this review as a counterbalance to his comments.

I have counted Jacques Werth as a mentor and (if I may be so bold) friend, since meeting him in early 2000. I met him at my first HPS seminar. I have taken follow-up seminars with his company and trainers as refresher courses a couple times.

I also met Mr. Wagner at my first HPS seminar (February, 2000) and subsequently worked for him as a contract prospector. At the seminar where we met, Mr. Wagner was training to become a High Probability Sales Trainer. After the seminar, and over the course of a couple years, periodically, Mr. Wagner would bill me out to his clients and have me make dials. He would supply the list and give me the offers to use.

Reviewing aspects of this experience, I believe Mr. Wagner fundamentally fails to grasp the full meaning and implications of the High Probability process. In essence, he has failed to make the necessary shift in paradigm out of the "traditional" approach which High Probability Selling requires.

His statement that the HPS book is not complete, and that one should not buy the book unless one plans to take the seminar - which he implies is expensive - I find to be a petty and mean-spirited criticism.

Surely any serious professional attends training. The reason to buy books like "High Probability Selling" is to allow us to cheaply get a glimpse of other approaches. If you can, I recommend you buy Mr. Wagner's book (entitled something like, "How to be the number one Salesperson at your company") and make your own comparison.

Anyone can read Tom Hopkins and adopt a few rhetorical tricks and say they've "learned selling." However, "traditional sales methods" are based in manipulation - and it is not possible to create relationships of trust and respect if your method of dealing with people is based in manipulation. Studies of consumer purchasing indicate that trust and respect are the most important values we seek in a sales person. High Probability Selling is based entirely around non-manipulative sales methods - to quote Mr. Wagner himself (from when he was a proponent of High Probability Selling), "You do the math."

I wholeheartedly recommend Jacques Werth's approach and know that it changed my perspective on business and even human relationships.

If you have to make cold calls to stay in business, this book really shows why many of the things sales people are taught to do fail to help them. Werth shows how to demonstrate integrity during your calls and build true rapport.

you're wrong. I have been in sales 22 years, and I guarantee you this is such a radical, effective method that it will transform how much you close and how you close, and it will free you from the whipped dog part of being in sales. This book is simply about dignity - yours and the prospect's. These men know what they are talking about, the book is brilliant and revolutionary, and it's one you DEFINITELY do not want your competition's sales force to get their grubby hands on. Buy it, love it, use it. Good work, gentlemen!