Deb Titus, Guest Speaker. Reaction from Student Stephen Dade

Having been to one of Deb’s seminars before, I was very excited to see her come into class because I learned a lot from her in the past.  The seminar I saw before was a Dale Carnegie event, and after the seminar, my boss wanted to sign me up for a multi-session class with Deb.  I never got the chance to go to the class, and I felt that I was missing out on something that would have been great for me.

Picture Taken by Steve Dade 11/1/11

            The first thing that stood out to me about her presentation was her style of not giving us all of the answers, but leading us to the answers.  It seemed like she was very used to being in a classroom, and teaching a group of sales students.  Having us ask her the questions we should ask her if we were selling her a car, and having us take it a step further each time rather than giving us all of the questions we would ask is a much more powerful way to teach a lesson.  Having sold cars before, I knew a lot of the right questions to ask, but I realized that I would have been a much better salesperson if I had the right training.  I was trained to ask a lot of “As-is” questions and a few “Should be” questions, but I did not ask many other questions with higher implication.

            Earlier in the presentation, she asked us all to write down three things that we would want people to say about us when we are not around.  My reputation is very important to me as a business owner and as a salesperson, especially in an area like this where word of mouth is so important.  If I come off as less than reputable to one person, he will likely tell other people that he knows not to deal with me.  If people see me as being very professional and knowledgeable in my area it will be easy for me to get references, and I will get a reputation as a person that businesses should work with. 

            Once a person gets a bad reputation, it is hard to turn it around.  Even if I have a good reputation for years, if I do something illegal or immoral that reputation that I took so long to build up can be gone in an instant.  It is like all of the baseball players that were accused of taking steroids, even if they never took steroids the accusation alone could keep them out of the hall of fame.  If I ask myself every day what I want people to say about me behind my back it will help me to stay focused on living up to that reputation every day.

            One thing that I thought was interesting was that the four types of questions she taught us were right in line with SPIN, even though they went by different names.  Even though I never felt that I doubted the SPIN method, it helps to reaffirm that the types of questions that we ask is extremely important to the sale.  Seeing the questions on the scale and how they fall on the implication scale, and hearing Deb talk about what types of questions are more meaningful in the sales process was exactly what we had been learning.  This was proven to be more powerful when we were asking Deb the questions as if we were selling her a car.  A lot of the “As-is” questions started to seem repetitive and not as helpful when they were coming up, and it was more difficult to come up with “Barrier” or “Payout” questions.

            I was very happy to hear Deb talk, and it would be great if she were to teach at Plymouth State University.  She has obviously done very well as a sales coach, and having another successful sales professional as a teacher would be great for everybody involved in the sales program.  It is always nice to hear another perspective on the same things we are learning, especially from somebody as knowledgeable as Deb.  My impressions about Deb before we heard he speak to our class was backed up, and I look forward to hearing from her again in the future.