Five Levels of Selling

This past week, my wife inadvertently drop kicked our toaster oven and caused it to experience a catastrophic failure. The toaster oven, the microwave and my grill are necessary to sustain life at our house if I have to fix any food. The toaster oven is great because it works well for just the two of us and I don’t have to fire up the oven to bake or broil something.

Since I wanted to fix some salmon in the toaster oven and we were without, it required a trip to our local discount store to find a replacement. Upon reaching the appropriate aisle, we were confronted with 6 choices and the only point of differentiation was price ranging from just under $20 to slightly over $60. It was then that I started thinking about the different levels of selling and this was the lowest possible level.

Level 1 is self service. I even cornered an “associate” to get more information, but she really didn’t have anything to offer.

It was about this time that I came to realize that there was boxed inventory above the display. Pulling down box after box, it became apparent that the manufacturers had outlined the features of each unit on the exterior of the box.

Level 2 selling is when the product features are provided. This information may be beneficial to a knowledgeable consumer, but it didn’t mean a lot to me. It was then that I turned to my wife for help. She was able to provide me with an explanation for each of the features.

Level 3 selling is when the benefits associated with the features are provided. An option on one of the ovens we looked at was a convection feature. I had no idea what that was and my wife explained that it helped provide a more even heat. While I thought the even heat thing sounded good, I didn’t really understand what that meant to me.

Level 4 selling is when the benefits can be turned into “You can” statements. What I really wanted was someone to tell me that because of the convection feature that I could cook my salmon better or faster. Maybe that the cooked food would be juicier or more flavorful because of this feature. (Oh well, I can dream can’t I?) I am such a sucker for a good salesperson that I can be easily maneuvered from the perfectly adequate basic unit to a high end sale if someone will just help me justify that the high end unit will help me to do something beyond what the basic unit will allow me to do.

We finally decided on one of the toaster options, purchased it and headed home to fix the salmon. All the way home I kept thinking about the different levels of selling and it dawned on me that I had experienced another level of selling many years ago when I got my first apartment in New York. One of my first visitors was an Electrolux sales person and my first acquisition was an Electrolux vacuum. I had acquired an old canister vacuum from my parents before I left for New York, but I remember the sales person dumping dirt on my carpet. I got out my hand me down vacuum and cleaned up the mess the best I could. The Electrolux sales person then cleaned where I had cleaned and demonstrated how much more the Electrolux picked up than my existing unit. I bought the Electrolux.

Level 5 selling is when the product can be experienced or demonstrated to outperform the other option or options.

When you think about how you market your product, at what level are you selling your product? Is there something that you could do to help move to a higher level and increase your sales and/or your profitability? nn¶ Copyright Bob Cannon/The Cannon Advantage, 2007. All rights reserved.