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Playing Sales Jazz

Posted 8 years ago

The buying experience has evolved dramatically. Unfortunately, sales practices haven’t always kept up. Gregg Baron’s The Art of Influence Simplified shows sales professionals how to close that gap by meeting customers and prospects where they are and flexing to what’s important to them. It’s simple, straight forward and the prescription for being much more effective in the current environment. – Dr. Tony Alessandra, CEO

Playing Sales Jazz™

by Gregg Baron

What makes jazz different from almost any other kind of music? Improvisation. One of the most important things you can do to enhance your success in any situation is thinking in advance. That means planning, anticipating, practicing, and being more strategic.
If you were a professional jazz musician you would work on your craft. You would practice, rehearse, listen and watch your performances in an effort to get better and be prepared for your next performance. However, as a jazz musician, when you get into the performance, you must be able to improvise.
The same is true for a Sales Professional. You plan, anticipate and prepare before the sales call. Then you adjust and flex in the moment based on what you’re learning, hearing, seeing, and gathering as you are engaging with your prospect.
The recommendation is to “always go in with a plan, and expect to improvise.” This approach is called Sales Jazz. Sales Jazz addresses the real world need to remain focused and flexible throughout the process. That includes syncing to their behavioral style, adjusting the type of questions you ask and how you ask them, the time you have for the conversation, the solution path you intended to go down and essentially everything else.
We see extraordinary sales professionals:

  1. Anticipate, prepare, start the sales call with a clear plan
  2. Master Sales Jazz: Improvise, flex, adapt and adjust as “the invisible becomes visible”
  3. Remain focused, balanced and adaptable throughout the process to optimally manage the value of the experience for the customer

The plan should typically start with Your Influence Outcome (what you want them to understand, believe and/or do) in this next step and overall. Then formulate your plan to include anything you already know about their behavioral style, expectations, experiences, needs, beliefs, priorities, preferences and history.
Coaching Point – Go into every sales situation prepared with a clear plan. Then be in the moment by listening strategically and improvise as needed to enhance the experience and the value you deliver for your audience.
To read more about the Art of Influence Simplified go here.


sales jazzGregg Baron, CMC, is a certified management consultant at Success Sciences.  Gregg has extensive experience in the areas of enhancing customer loyalty and retention, sales performance, and the leadership practices for leading change. Some of his clients include Verizon, Honeywell, Comcast, Novartis, KPMG, JPMorgan Chase, Con Edison, American Express Travel, Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruise Lines.
His last book Leadership without Excuses: How to Create Accountability and High Performance, was published by McGraw-Hill. He founded Success Sciences, which is headquartered in Tampa, in 1986.
To explore your issues and approaches for enhancing sales performance and service quality, contact Gregg’s team at Success Sciences today about a no obligation exploration of “the possible.”