Costell's innovations took him from sales manager of one circle to all three. The Costell Sell   (cont'd)     Just five weeks into his first sales job, the district sales manager confidentially advised him to leave: Costell was too talented to be shackled by the company's seniority policy. Three days later he was hired by M.C.C. Powers, a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning company, and, as they say, the rest is history. The only non-engineer in his training class, Costell, a dedicated runner, memorized equations by using flash cards during his daily 5-mi jog. Within a year, Costell was No. 5 in the national sales force of 100 and within two years was manager of the service branch of the year.     When York's air conditioning division began looking for its first national sales manager, Costell says the company's then director of field operations, Sherman Turner, told him, "You're too damn young, too damn inexperienced, and you've got the job." Without ever having held a regional position, Costell found himself a national sales manager for a Fortune 500 company that sold industrial and commercial air conditioning systems, along with upgrading and maintenance services, to engineers, contractor, and building owners.     To Costell, traditional techniques encourage salespeople to believe that getting maximum information from customers jeopardizes rather than helps their sales. For example, take a salesperson who knows he can save a customer 20% on his energy bill with a York air conditioning system. If the customer's stated objective is to cut costs, the salesperson is falsely secure in having a hot prospect. But if the salesperson had probed properly, he'd have asked the customer, "How will attainment of your objective be measured?" (always a pivotal question in Costell's strategy). And, upon discovering the customer will only consider his cost cutting goals as met when he saves 30% on his energy bill, the salesperson would waste no more valuable time.