Canned or scripted sales approaches are rarely successful, because one size does not fit all in selling.

Studies conducted by the public opinion researcher, social scientist and author Daniel Yankelovich in the late '70's and the Stanford Research Institute's VALS (values, attitudes and life-styles) study that assessed buying motives in the early '80's, indicate that there are at least five distinct categories of purchasers or individual buying modes.

These studies provided insight into how adults communicate, are persuaded and how they make buying decisions.

It's almost impossible to create a verbatim sales pitch to address the variety of issues (sometimes conflicting) in each of these categories. Therefore a successful sales or service industry professional must learn through extensive in-depth probing what type of buyer he is dealing with and then create a custom-tailored presentation based specifically on the answers he receives from his probing.

Please check out our self-directed learning system that will help you replace canned presentations with a simple six-step selling process where answering objections and closing the sale often take care of themselves:

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VIRDEN THORNTON is the founder and President of The $elling Edge®, Inc. a firm specializing in sales, customer relations, and management training and development. Clients have included Sears Optical, Eastman Kodak, IBM, Deloitte & Touché, Bank One, Jefferson Pilot, and Wal-Mart to name a few. Virden is the author of Prospecting: The Key To Sales Success and the best selling Building & Closing the Sale, Fifty-Minute series books and Close That Sale, a video/audio tape series published by Crisp Publicantions a dividion of Thompson Learning. He has also authored a client acclaimed Self-Directed Learning series of sales, coaching & team development, telemarketing, and personal productivity training guides. To obtain a substantial discount on two of Virden's new manuals, 101 Sales Myths and Organizing For Sales Success, check out the listings on The $elling Edge, Inc. website at: http://www.TheSellingEdge.com/books1.htm.

Note: You can contact Virden at: virden@TheSellingEdge.com.