What is Integrity Selling?
Integrity Selling is more than just a sales technique; it’s a comprehensive sales training program designed to foster a customer-centric approach to selling. This program helps sales professionals build strong, trust-based relationships with their customers by focusing on understanding their needs and providing tailored solutions. At its core, Integrity Selling is a needs-focused selling system that emphasises the importance of seeing the world from the customer’s perspective and delivering genuine value.
The Integrity Selling curriculum embodies a way of thinking and behaving that prioritizes trust, credibility, and long-term relationships. By adopting this approach, sales reps discover how to connect more deeply with their clients, leading to improved sales performance and more fulfilling sales careers. This value-driven sales process ensures that sales professionals are not just selling products, but are genuinely helping their customers solve problems and achieve their goals.
How Emotional Intelligence and the Sales Process Combine for Sales Success
Many sales courses and sales training programs fail to live up to their promise because they concentrate on process and product rather than the person. Failing to adapt sales strategies can lead to unfulfilled sales careers and unmet quotas. A confident, personable salesperson is the one who sells most. Who you are being in sales makes all the difference in the world. The question answered by sales training should not be how to ignite sales, but rather how to ignite the salesperson.
In this article, you’ll discover the six steps to integrity selling® and the power of emotional intelligence in the selling process. Employing these steps with behavioural change based in emotional intelligence will guarantee you ignite sales and accede targets.
To Help the Customer Buy, Don’t Sell!
Today’s customers are more informed and better prepared than ever before. If they simply wanted to buy a product, they could do so online. So, what is it that customers really want? They want a solution.
It is therefore paramount that a salesperson focuses on needs, developing an ongoing relationship that resonates with the inner beliefs and values of the customer. It is this deep understanding of customer need that promotes customer confidence in the salesperson. Confidence in the integrity of the salesperson encourages long-term business commitments. Long-term commitment is what truly ignites sales.
Introducing Sales Congruence
There are five dimensions that must be aligned to ignite the selling potential of individuals and their teams. These are:
- View of selling
- Values
- Belief in product
- View of abilities
- Commitment to activities
Where gaps between these occur, inner conflicts arise. These directly impact sales performance. Integrity selling® brings these five dimensions into congruence. The result is a sales team that is freed from inner conflict. Energy and ambition are ignited, and stronger sales skills released. The key to this outcome is developing the individual sales persons emotional competencies for greater self-awareness because: who you are being makes all the difference in the world.
Introducing AIDInc – the customer-focused six steps of integrity selling®
The AIDInc sales model is one of the most powerful tools of integrity selling®. By employing this sales structure rigorously, a salesperson will be using a tried-and-tested sales process which unleashes the unlimited potential created by improving interpersonal emotional competencies. The AIDInc process naturally creates focus on the customer, aiding the salesperson to gain trust, understand needs, and provide a solution.
AIDInc is an acronym for:
- Approach
- Interview
- Demonstrate
- Val-I-date
- Negotiate
- Close
1. Approach
This is the stage at which the salesperson gains trust and rapport with the customer. Make sure that you have done your homework, and have knowledge on the client and their business. The customer will be consciously or unconsciously sizing you up, so dress for success. Engage the customer in conversation that is focused on getting to know them, this stage is about setting the environment for a conversation of mutual engagement. Our business environments are filled with disruptions and pressures. As sales people we need to support the client in breaking from the current pressures of the day to focus in on our conversation which is all about them and solving their business challenges. We gain the right to the next step in the process by doing the Approach well.
2. Interview
With heightened emotional intelligence, you will be able to be yourself and connect effectively with the customer. Effective communication is the art of motivation and collaboration – you will be collaborating to achieve a solution to the customer’s needs and motivating them to take action.
At this stage, you should seek to build on the initial rapport, and focus on the client and their business issues and needs. This step in the Integrity Selling is process is by far the most important. In the interview step you are discovering the needs, problems and concerns of your customer. This is the time to listen, probe and ask questions from curiosity to get at the heart of their challenges.
Take notes, demonstrate your sincerely interest in what you are learning about their situation. Show that you are fully committed to their needs, finding a solution to their problems and dealing with any concerns.
3. Demonstrate
This is the point at which you demonstrate that you can provide a solution to the customer’s needs. Demonstrate that you and your company have the knowledge and experience to provide a solution to their stated need and handle any concerns. Use brochures, schematics, drawings, formal proposals and project images to reiterate your ability. In fact, anything that demonstrates your capability to be the solution to the customer’s needs.
4. Val-I-date
Confirm your experience and abilities. Validate your knowledge. Provide case studies and testimonials as evidence that you have solved this challenge for others. Be sure to translate features into benefits. Take the time to be sure the customer has validated that they like what you have presented as a solution to their needs. If there are concerns go back and address them before moving to the next step.
5. Negotiate
The Negotiating step is about working out problems that keep people from buying something they want to buy. When you’ve completed the pervious steps in the Integrity Selling process effectively then trust and rapport are strong. On this foundation negotiation becomes a partnership to work through customer concerns. When trust and rapport are weak almost any negotiation can become combative.
In the Negotiate Step you find out what concerns or objectives remain and you welcome them. You identify and clarify specific objections, discuss solutions and ask their opinions for the best solution. Agree on a way forward.
6. Close
You don’t sell in the close, you close after you’ve sold. In this step you ask trial-closing questions to get opinions and responses. You listen and reinforce the responses, you restate benefits that outweigh cost. Close the deal by asking for a positive decision. The close is easy when you’ve completed all the other IS steps effectively. The customer will close themselves!
Sales Training Programs with Integrity Selling
Our sales training programs are designed to deliver transformative results by integrating the principles of Integrity Selling® and the AIDInc model, which emphasises a customer-focused approach at every stage of the sales process. Whether you are looking to build foundational sales skills or enhance your team’s ability to form strong customer relationships, our programs are built around proven sales frameworks tailored to your organisation’s needs. This ensures that your team not only understands the key steps of the sales process but is also equipped with the tools and mindset to apply them effectively in real-world scenarios for sales success.
For example, Sales 101 provides your team with comprehensive training across the entire sales cycle, from prospecting to closing deals, ensuring they are confident and competent at each stage. This customised program helps align your sales process with your specific products or services, maximising the relevance and impact on your team’s day-to-day activities. Similarly, our PQ Sales Development program supports salespeople in building the resilience, mental fitness, and reflective capabilities essential for fostering long-term, collaborative customer relationships. With its combination of app-based learning and group coaching, sales professionals can apply these principles in live situations, enhancing their ability to connect with clients and achieve results.
For sales leaders, our Leading Sales Performance program provides the strategic skills needed to guide and inspire their teams. By covering areas such as customer profiling, prospecting, and team motivation, this intensive five-day programme ensures that sales leaders are equipped to drive high-performance sales teams. Through a focus on leadership and strategic sales planning, this program empowers sales leaders to create an environment where their teams can thrive and consistently meet targets, ensuring sustainable growth and success for the organisation.
Guaranteeing Maximum Results
The key to igniting sales and sales success with the AIDInc process is emotional intelligence. Being self-aware and Other aware is the foundation for emotional intelligence, and it is this that empowers the ability of salespeople to connect personally and professionally with customers. It increases the ability to communicate effectively, collaborate efficiently, and motivate ceaselessly. This is why a key aspect of our Integrity Selling® course is the work it does to expand the beliefs of the salesperson about himself or herself. I’ll say it one last time – who you are being in sales makes all the difference in the world.
Contact us today, and discover how we could help your sales team to manage themselves, their prospects, and ignite sales.
