Elite Sales Strategies

3Insights and Information Disparity

Information is the resolution of uncertainty.

—Claude Shannon

You cannot be One-Up without maintaining information disparity, which means you possess information your client is not aware of or has not yet recognized. The way you improve your client's decisions and results is by transferring your insights to them, moving them from One-Down to One-Up in the course of one or more conversations. This core strategy is the execution of “I know something you don't know. May I share it with you?”

Trade Secrets

When large companies started to professionalize sales in the 1920s, they had the advantage of total information disparity. Very little product information was easily available to prospects; Google was generations away, so outside of catalogs and stores, there was no way to learn about the increasing number of products and services ushered in by the Industrial Age. Both B2C and B2B customers had no choice but to speak with a salesperson. But those salespeople also had to gain the client's trust in their company, which they usually did by talking about the company's history or reputation. Not knowing who you could trust was an obstacle to buying and selling, especially with snake oil salesmen around every corner, so the rule of the day was caveat emptor (buyer beware).

Because information was scarce, the salesperson would also have to explain their product's features and benefits, using the opportunity to insist that the customer's friends ...