Principals of Sales Mastery

Sales Mastery is a comprehensive, three day training program that teaches the latest paradigms of consultative selling. It is designed to increase sales effectiveness, increase sales efficiency and to give your organization a customized sales process. Sales Mastery is a proven program for changing selling behaviors and getting results. 

1. Social Styles

Your social can reduce your selling effectiveness by conflicting with others. Participants will learn how to read people and accommodate their preferences. Each social style thinks and communicates differently. The also make decisions and process information differently. This module analyzes the impact of social styles as they relate to every aspect of consultative selling.  

  • How to Identify Social Styles
  • Understanding Preferences of Each Style
  • Styles Under Stress – Backup Behavior
  • How to Flex to Each Style
  • Style Behaviors that Limit Sales Effectiveness
  • How to Sell to Each Style

It is sad to lose a sale because your social style is in your way.

2. Listening Beyond Hearing

Many salespeople have poor listening skills which impairs their ability to conduct a proper needs assessment. Listening is the most important skill in consultative selling, customer service, management and interpersonal effectiveness. The key to mastering this skill is listening with the intent to understand, not to reply. To accomplish this, we must identify our barriers to listening and eliminate them.   

  • Three Communication Climates
  • Four Levels of Listgening
  • Barriers to Listening
  • Using "Acceptance" to Validate Opinions
  • Empathic Listening - #1 Skill

Prospects don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.  

3. Needs Assessment

The average salesperson doesn’t know how to conduct a proper and thorough “needs assessment.” They don’t get enough information to formulate a customized solution to the prospect’s problems.

Salespeople are taught a questioning methodology that will help them identify, understand and quantify prospect needs and business problems. Multiple implication questions are used to fully understand the issues around each problem. The quantified information gives the prospect cost justification for the purchase. The questions in the model are simple and easy to use. 

  • Setting Expectations for the Call
  • Open, Closed & Elaborative Questions
  • Piggyback Questioning - Scripting Exercise
  • Qualifying the Prospect
  • Multiple Buying Influences; Questioning the Economic Buyer
  • The Paradigm Questioning Model
  • Problem, Implication and Payoff Questions
  • Using Crowbar Questions to Create Needs
  • Getting a Value Proposition & Price Justification

This style of questioning motivates the prospect to share more information than they typically give to other salespeople. Prospects become engaged.

4. Presenting Solutions

Long winded, generic presentations are boring, outdated and ineffective. Participants will learn how to present their product as a solution to prospect needs and business problems. They will learn how to customize benefit statements that show quantifiable outcomes. This provides a “value proposition” for the prospect.

  • The Paradigm Presentation Model
  • How to Customize Benefits
  • Getting Feedback with Questions
  • Rules for Powerful Presentations
  • Creating a Customized "Leave Behind"
  • Creating and Using Pillars of Strength

Customized presentations provide solutions to the prospect's problems. They differentiate you from the competition. 

5. Getting Commitment

Traditional trial closes are outdated and ineffective in consultative selling. Salespeople will learn how to get an incremental commitment at every customer contact throughout the selling process. This moves the sale forward to the next level of commitment.

  • Research Findings on Closing Techniques
  • Getting Commitment – Small Sales versus Large Sales
  • Using Incremental Commitment Questions to Advance the Sale

If you don’t move the sale forward at every customer contact, it tends to go sideways!

6. Resolving Objections

Participants will learn a simple model for resolving objections. All objections have a hidden agenda. Some objections are stated in the form of “loaded questions”. Resolving objections requires awareness, acceptance, questions and high level listening skills. Getting defensive is a poor response to objections. 

  • Using the Climate of Acceptance
  • Categories of Objections
  • Loaded Questions
  • What Causes Objections
  • Resolving Objections – A Model

Unresolved objections and answering loaded questions can kill a sale!


"I originally met Al Patey over 15 years ago in his Sales Mastery Program.  My average sales number was about 125% of my annual quota. One year after the training with Al I was able to achieve 202%!  The only changes I made were to incorporate Sales Mastery into my daily work. The ROI is a no-brainer!'

Lisa Quast, President, Career Woman, Inc. 
Former EVP and GM, Philips Healthcare, Bothell, WA