In the cult classic sales movie Glengarry Glen Ross, Alec Baldwin’s character outlines a sales process using the acronym A-I-D-A.
While the movie is quite entertaining, this scene reminds me of many things I feel are missing from sales processes and the techniques taught to salespeople. Here is a quick breakdown of those.
Missing Item #1 – There is no explanation of the “how”.
In this clip from Glengarry Glen Ross, the manager outlines the sales process that the salespeople should use. He goes through each stage, and while it is easy to see how those stages logically fit together and could be a good order of steps to take a prospect through, he does not explain how to guide a prospect through each stage.
There is a mention of Attention and Interest. The manager says, “Do I have your attention?” and “Are you interested?” but he says nothing about how to genuinely grab the prospect’s attention and build genuine interest.
Now, I know this is just a movie, and it probably would not have been very entertaining if it had handled sales training properly. But I have worked for many different sales managers and gone through many training programs, and they all had this same gap: They focus only on telling you what to do, not how to do it.
For example, a company will often teach its salespeople about the products it needs to sell, and then they tell them to go get the prospect’s attention (generate leads), get them interested (create qualified opportunities), and get them to make a decision (close the deal). They will not get into any details about how to best do any of those steps.
Because they are only taught about the products they sell, salespeople often focus primarily on talking about their products and services to grab the prospect’s attention and build interest. What they might not realize is that there is a better way, which can include focusing more on the value offered, the pain resolved, the ways you are different, the impacts of doing nothing, customer examples, ROI, etc.
Missing Item #2 – There is no step for pre-qualifying.
Another big flaw in Glengarry Glen Ross’ A-I-D-A is that it lacks a step for prequalifying the prospect. One of the biggest mistakes that I think salespeople make is not qualifying prospects enough or at all.
Pre-qualifying the prospect involves asking a few questions to determine whether the prospect is even in the general vicinity of needing what the salesperson is trying to sell. This is an extremely powerful step for a few reasons:
- It does not make sense for either party to invest time discussing if the prospect is nowhere close to being a fit, and that can be identified when pre-qualifying
- Pre-qualifying can save time trying to sell to prospects that have an extremely low probability of purchasing
- It makes the sales process more of a consultative sales methodology
- It makes the conversation more interactive by getting the prospect talking
- It is a less pushy approach because it takes a salesperson from talking about their stuff and shifts them to ask the prospect about their world
- It makes it easier to close at the end of the sales process if you have pre-qualified at the beginning
If I were to make a change to the Glengarry Glen Ross A-I-D-A sales process, I would add a Q after Attention to pre-qualify. Once I have your attention, I will then pre-qualify you to determine if it makes sense for me to spend my valuable time talking to you.
