3/14/01 - At the top of every print sales manager’s or owner’s wish list is great salespeople. In fact, printers commonly believe that “great salespeople are born, not made.” Yet the opposite is actually true. According to Peter Ebner, one of the industry’s leading sales trainers, in reality great salespeople are successful because they have mastered specific sales skills. Now, his complete training approach is available exclusively from NAPL in a series of tapes and CD’s.   As part of an introduction special, NAPL is offering a free booklet, “Supercharge Your Print Sales,” to show printers how to turn salespeople into top producers. Author of How to Grow Rich “Selling” Printing and How to “Market” Your Printing Business, as well as NAPL’s Take the Risk Out of Hiring Print Salespeople, Ebner has trained more than 50,000 print salespeople. He annually presents more than 200 talks, seminars, and in-house training programs to some of the country’s largest printing companies. He is also a well-known columnist for Canada’s The Graphic Monthly magazine, writing articles on sales and sales management. According to Ebner, there are two types of motivation. One is external, or “spurious” (false) motivation; and the other is internal, or concrete motivation. While an astounding industry has mushroomed during the last decade to promote spurious motivation, in fact, the results are short-lived. “People return with a new outlook and embrace their first prospect,” comments Ebner, “until he or she says ‘Leave me the quote and I’ll get back to you.’ When the next prospect says he’d like to shop around, and the prospect after that says she can get the job done for less—well, reality sets in rather quickly. The motivation to make another call melts away.”  Keeping a sales staff going requires substantially more, says Ebner. Giving salespeople concrete skills that teach them how to overcome objections and close the sale keeps their morale strong—because they know they can get past the challenges and get the contract. For more information or to order an Ebner publication, call NAPL Customer Service at (800) 642-6275, ext. 1315 or order online.