HATTIE: Ron, tell us the difference between needs-focused selling and product-focused selling.

RON WILLINGHAM (Chairman, Integrity Training Systems): There is a big difference.

Needs-focused selling is an attempt to go in without any kind of selling effort or activity and understand what people's needs are, what their problems are, what do they want filled that they're not having right now?

What results or objectives do they want to reach that they're not now reaching? And so it's a consultancy process, a process of interviewing, of asking questions, of listening and understanding what their needs are.

Product-focused selling is just the opposite.

In product-focused selling, we go in and begin to tell about our product or service, what its features, advantages and benefits are and why people should have it, and then we ask them to buy it. That's the typical way that people have tried to sell in the past. And in all probability, that's the way most people try to sell us today.