Consultant, Rep? Opener, Closer?

A chap with twenty years sales experience was telling me over a pint the other day that he thought it extremely rare that a salesperson could be both a top consultative seller and a hard closer. He thought the skillsets were so opposite in their focus that they couldn’t belong to the same person.

He went on by looking in similar vein at the unlikelihood of being both a good opener and a good closer.

By opener, he meant someone that gets your foot in the door on a deal.

He then recalled stories he’d heard of the double-glazing industry. These are people that make movie Tin Men DeVito and Dreyfus look like girl guides.

One guy was a closer. Renowned as the toughest on the books. He apparently used to walk into someone’s home – remember, for the very first time as all the preceding work was done by an opener – and put down two sets of footwear.

A pair of hobnail boots and a pair of slippers.

His opening gambit;

we can do this the hard way, or the easy way…

Incredible.

Still, we don’t all have the luxury of deal openers, or sending someone along to be king closer when we’ve done all the hard fact finding. So which pole do you gravitate towards and what can you do to make the other work better for you?