Part 2 in Why simple sells: The barriers to making a buying decision


Yesterday I wrote about why simple sells. Today I’m going to explain how this relates to sales and one of the most powerful sales techniques that I use. Sheesh, that sounded so cheesy.

Let’s say hypothetically I go into a sales meeting and my prospect says “So tell me about your company / services / product?”

What do you say here?

Think about this for a moment because you probably experience this situation often, if not every day. I know I do.

Got your answer? Ok, I’m going to bet that you threw up all over your customer by telling them all about the fabulous services you can provide. BLAH. Yuck yuck yuck.

You just gave the prospect reasons to decide you aren’t the best solution.

I’m serious here, I’ve made the mistake myself but there is a much, much better response and it gets the person on the other side of the table talking.

What is it? It’s simple.

Respond by asking a question back. Ask: “Oh sure, but first, you must have asked me here for a reason, why?”

Wow, did you get that? Instantly you’ve turned the tables and in a very cool way. You’ve basically inspired thm to talk about their situation. They’re going to tell you everything wrong with their current situation, everything they want changed, and go into things in depth. They’re basically selling themselves to you and telling you what they need.

The other way this whole scenario could work out would be that you end up telling the prospect all about your company first. When you do that, you’re just guessing about what services might be important to them. Say you are a web design shop that specializes in four industries and you do Flash and XHTML really well plus a bunch of other stuff (maybe your elevator speach perhaps?).

Cool, so you just spewed all of that info onto the client before you knew if that mattered to them. They might not want those things and by presenting your company as a specialist in those areas suddenly you don’t look like the perfect solution anymore.

You’ve given them reasons not to go choose you.

Ok, so that’s my sales lesson for the day. Hope it was enjoyable. If so perhaps I’ll write about some of the other sales techniques I know.


5 responses to “Part 2 in Why simple sells: The barriers to making a buying decision”

  1. Everyone should also be prep’d for how do you handle the inevitable counter response of a “no, you asked for the appointment and quite honestly I’m doing it as a courtesy”, or “my boss said that I should meet with you”?

    What would Mr. Sandler say? (Hint, many more questions should ensue… time to dig for that pain!)

  2. Ryan, I can tell you and I have read the same book. I got so much good coaching from Sandler’s principles. Awesome stuff. Now if I can just find out who borrowed my Sandler book I can get it back.

    Jeff: True, sometimes you have to tell them how you can solve a problem, but oftentimes the prospect convinces themselves that they need you simply by talking about their pain.

    Good stuff. Thanks guys!

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