Everyone knows that in selling or coaching, it’s extremely dangerous to make assumptions about your customer or the person you’re coaching. It’s one of those principles that.s drummed into sales people on day one of their induction sales training. But we’re all guilty of making assumptions from time to time – I know I am. Read on to see how dangerous these can be.
Over Christmas I was talking to my three children about a fearful incident when I was about their age. The story shocked them at the time and they still don’t believe it was true. But I assure you it was.
My first pet was a cute golden hamster that I named Hammy – original I know. Now we didn’t live in a big house so I shared a room with Hammy and my two brothers who I hated passionately. We were constantly caught bashing the life out of each other, as brothers do.
It came to a head one evening when Hammy, being a nocturnal creature, kept us all up with his squealing exercise wheel. It was incessant. It was excruciatingly painful. Nothing we could do would stop him or fix the squeak. And the fighting with my brothers got even worse.
He had to go. The next day Hammy found his way into the garden shed. What a relief, at last we could get some sleep. We had solved the problem but only until that fateful morning.
It was freezing and pitch black at 6am. On my way to my paper-round, I popped my head around the shed door to look up on Hammy. I stared into his cage with a torch, he was motionless. I was devastated – my only true friend was dead and it was my entire fault evicting him to the bitter, murky shed.
Ignoring my paper round, I picked him up and took him indoors. This 12 year old boy was distraught and overwhelmed by it all. So I laid him on the kitchen table and went upstairs to cry my little heart out. Gradually the house woke up and I heard a banshee like shriek from the kitchen. My Mum had found a stone cold hamster on the kitchen table. Not that I could see at the time what the problem was, after all it was dead but maybe that was the point.
“Take it out immediately” screamed mum, so I grabbed Hammy and ran outside to bury him. As I took my old friend outside I laid him down on the earth next to the shovel ready to dig his grave, but then I saw his foot twitch. I thought I was seeing things so I dried my eyes and looked again. There it went again. It had moved and it wasn’t a muscle spasm. He was alive.
I rushed indoors and plopped him on the storage heater. With careful nursing and stroking, slowly and bit by bit he came back to life and I was the happiest little boy on the planet.
Hammy went on to live a normal life. I found out years later that he had merely hibernated that cold night. I still think it was a miracle. And he was within 5 feet of a living grave. So you see that making assumptions can critically damage your health – well maybe your pet hamster. Not assuming can literally save lives.
Seriously though, the next time you find yourself about to make an assumption about the needs of a customer, because you’ve heard it all before dozens of times or you think everyone wants the price to be lower or you assume the recession will gobble you up….just remember that devoted 12 year old boy bringing back to life his pet hamster, Hammy.
Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visitwww.archertraining.co.uk or his sales blog at www.paularcher.com
What are the main issues you face when you target new vertical markets where you don’t have any experience in that area. Also, how do you overcome these problems?
I get asked those questions frequently. But usually it’s after the decision has already been made and the poor salespeople are struggling to gain a foothold in the new vertical market.
If you’re considering moving your company in a new business direction, here are my suggestions:
Your biggest issue will be credibility. Corporate decision makers don’t want to be your first client in a vertical market. They don’t want to have to educate you since it takes up their precious time.
Even though you’re a good company, they know that your lack of experience could lead to time-consuming and costly errors. They don’t want to risk this happening.
1. Move into the market slowly.
Don’t bet your company on success in the new vertical. Study the industry. Learn their terminology. Know their competitors. Double check for “fit”. I’ve seen way to many companies leap into new markets because they sense greater opportunity there than in their current market space.
2. Define the business case.
Uncover how they’re currently handling things related to your offering. What are the common status quo scenarios? What business objectives will they have difficulty achieving unless they change the status quo? What are the financial ramifications of these? Then define the value they’ll get from changing to your product/service.
Potential clients need to hear a strong value proposition that clearly articulates the business outcomes they’ll realize by using your offering. Use business terminology, not techie talk.
3. Create linkage.
If possible, try to create a link between your current customer base and your new one. If all your clients are schools and now you want to move to theme parks, you need to be able to clearly articulate why it’s relevant.
As an example, last week I had lunch with a good friend who spent over 20 years in marketing with a large accounting firm. She was laid off a while back. Now she wants to work with technology companies.
After analyzing both industries, combined with her experience we realized that her expertise was in helping company’s implement strategic changes in their marketing. That positioning makes sense to potential decision makers – and minimizes the “you don’t have any experience with companies like mine” objection.
4. Pursue smaller opportunities first.
This significantly reduces the decision maker’s perceived risk in moving ahead with a new player in the market. Then, make sure you do a superb job on delivering on what you promised. After that, pursue additional opportunities within the account to expand your footprint.
5. Train your salespeople on all the above.
Without this knowledge, they will flop. That I can guaranteed 100%. Ultimately these people have to make it happen. Don’t send them into the field with some worthless PowerPoints explaining your technology in excruciating detail. They need to be able to have intelligent business conversation with decision makers.
6. Create field-ready sales tools.
Focus especially on the early stages of the sales cycle. Your sales reps are going to have a tough time setting up meetings. Show them how to integrate their value proposition into phone calls, voicemails and emails.
Give them relevant white papers and case studies that are closely aligned with this new market segment. They must be able to show your company’s expertise to customers, so this is a necessity – even if you’re moving to a new market.
Create a “question matrix” that outlines what they should be looking for on calls and the questions they should ask to uncover this information. Develop customer-focused PowerPoints to use on follow-up meetings.
7. Pray!
It takes a lot of hard work to succeed in a new marketing segment. Implement the above suggestions and your chances of success increase. Rush blindly ahead and you’ll most likely waste tons of money, put your firm in financial distress, frustrate your sales force and create incredible internal animosity.
Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com
Every once in a while, I read something that a so-called sales expert says that really ticks me off. The other night it happened again. I was doing a quick scan of the latest issue of a popular magazine when suddenly I came across a whole slew of idiocy in just one article.
Here’s just a taste of this lunacy …
“In sales, the results are in the rejections.”
“Every time a contact results in a rejection, your salespeople can view the rejection as making money.”
“The secret is for each salesperson to realize how much rejection is necessary for success.’”
“Sales managers must coach their teams to embrace rejection.”
This is the stupidest advice you could ever get. Think about it. Can you ever imagine yourself saying this:
“Hallelujah! I’ve made 66 calls today and actually connected with 24 people. But of that number, 23 of them were total failures. Those decision makers blew me off as fast as they could. But one person asked me to sent a brochure, so it was really a great day. With all those rejections, I’m well on my way to success.”
Let me tell you why it’s even stupider than you might think.
Guess what happens if you embrace rejection as a part of the job and quickly move on to make the next call. You’re doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over.
What do I recommend? In my opinion, a rejection is a failure. It’s a sales call that did not result in a desirable outcome. If you want to get better at selling, it is imperative to analyze your failures to determine if a different approach could have yielded a better outcome.
There is NO other way to improve in this profession.
To be successful, you must take a serious look at all aspects of the interaction that were within your control. This includes:
Your word choices.
How you positioned your company.
The sequence of what you said.
How much you said: too little, too much.
Your tone, pace and sound.
Each one of these can be changed and potentially yield an improved outcome. So where do you start? I suggest you pay close attention to:
The specific obstacles you encounter.
What are your prospects saying: too high price, too expensive, currently satisfied? All these are indicators that you need to rethink your approach.
When you encounter these obstacles.
Take a look at what you said just prior to hearing the objection. Most likely the words preceding the client’s comments are key offenders.
The key point is that rejection is data. Simply data. It can be analyzed to determine trends, frequency, and even specific sales behaviors. When you think about it this way, you can experiment with various approaches.
You can simulate conditions by listening to your phone calls from your buyer’s perspective. You can get input from colleagues to see if what you say would sound interesting if they were your prospect. You can check with other sellers to see what strategies they use.
Stop listening to those sales gurus who tell you to “embrace rejection.” They’re spouting old-style selling techniques that won’t get you in the door of major corporations. They don’t have a clue what it takes to succeed in today’s marketplace.
Get smart and start analyzing your rejection. Look at it as a puzzle that needs solving. You may not know what it takes right now to crack into those corporate accounts, but you certainly have the ability to figure it out.
Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com.
Of course, you don’t mean to do that! But the truth is that it often happens without you even thinking out it.
Case in point: You’ve just learned all about your new product or service offering. Tons of details. All its selling points. You’re so excited & can’t wait to share what you’ve learned with your prospects.
And when you finally get into a meeting, what comes out?
“We’ve just introduced a new complete system (methodology/process) that’s guaranteed to provide fully integrated communications for all your technology and non-technology needs as well as provide significant return on your investment with an ROI of only 9 months.”
Blather! I know you’re thinking you sound impressive, but from a prospect’s perspective it’s downright intimidating. Their eyes slowly glaze over and before long, you’ve lost them.
To be a successful communicator, you need to talk like a normal human being.
Here’s an interesting tidbit that supports this premise: A language monitoring serviced analyzed the recent VP debate. Palin spoke at a 9.5 grade level, while Biden spoke at an 7.8 grade level. (Full article here.)
Both candidates are focused on connecting with voters, not impressing them. I have no doubt that they could have easily spoken at a much higher grade level – which would have meant bigger words, longer sentences and more complex sentence construction.
However, they chose not to do that. They wanted to relate to us.
If we’re focused on impressing prospects with our vast knowledge, we’ll lose them. They’ll feel stupid. They won’t open up. They won’t ask questions.
And we won’t get the business!
Question for you: Have you ever caught yourself trying to impress customers? What happened? Were you able to recover?
Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com
The use of voicemail has become so pervasive these past few years that sometimes you wonder if you’ll ever talk to another human being again.
Frustrating as it may be, over time you begin to accept it as the new norm. You expect to get voicemail and in a perverse sort of way may even relish it. It enables you to make that check on your “to do” list, showing you tried to get in but once again had no luck.
And admit it … leaving a message is a whole lot easier than talking to a person who says they have no need, throws objections in your path or slams the phone down on you.
In fact, the prevalence of voicemail can lull you into a sense of complacency. So much so, that you’re entirely unprepared for that rare moment in time when your prospect absent-mindedly picks up the phone.
Mind you, they would never answer it if they thought a seller was on the other end of the line. They’re likely right in the middle of a meeting and expecting a call from someone else.
Suddenly, instead of leaving your well-prepared voicemail message, you’re on the spot to say something intelligent and compelling. If you’re like most people, those kind of words don’t flow naturally from your mouth – especially when you’re under pressure.
When I was writing my book, one of my clients was actually working through it in real time, giving me immediate feedback on the strategies, processes and tips in it.
She had a great laugh at my expense when she read about my own major blooper when the vice president of sales actually answered the phone. I totally lost my cool.
My value proposition evaporated into thin air. I stumbled over my words, talked a mile a minute and blurted out this rambling, non-focused spiel about what my company did. It was horrible – totally unbecoming of someone in my position. In fact, I was embarrassed to be me.
I got off the phone as soon as I could before I dug myself into an even deeper hole. My only saving grace was that he probably wouldn’t remember who I was.
Alyssa thought that was really, really funny – that is, until the day it happened to her. She’d prepared this great voicemail script for a prospect with whom she was trying to get an appointment.
She was all set to leave her message at the beep, but it never came. Instead, Mr. Big answered the phone. Immediately Alyssa felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Her brain locked and she couldn’t think of a thing to say.
On the other end of the line, Mr. Big was saying, “Hello, hello. Is somebody there?”
“Yes,” she finally said. “This is Alyssa. I’m with Anonymous Software Firm.”
“What do you want?” he said curtly.
“We specialize in (self-serving words to describe her offering). I’d like to talk with you about your sales automation system and how our software can help you improve it.”
He cut her short. “We already have that covered. I’m in the middle of a meeting and have to go.”
End of call. He hung up.
So what will you say after your prospect says, “Hello?” Have you thought of it? Does it flow out of your mouth as easily as your voicemail? Or, are you getting ready to dig your own grave?
Here are several tips that will help you avoid sounding like a blooming idiot.
1. Keep it simple. After you say your name, it helps if the next sentence you say is the same for both your voicemail and an actual conversation. That way your brain won’t freeze.
2. Focus on business. Corporate decision makers hate peppy, enthusiastic people who can’t wait to share things about their product or service.
3. Develop a provocative question. You want to engage the decision maker in conversation as quickly as you can.
4. Check to see if they’re busy right then and there. If they’re distracted, you’re wasting your breath.
5. Don’t focus on being nice. Instead, focus on being a business professional that has something valuable to say.
Most of all, plan ahead. You know how seldom someone actually picks up their phone. This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. Make sure you put your best foot forward.
Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com
He’d frightened me to death with his automatic weapon and ferocious look. “There’s a problem with your passport” he alleged with a fierce voice and in broken English he continued. “You must come with me”
The next 30 minutes were spent in fear, trepidation and anxiety as I awaited my fate. You see I was leaving Iran following a sales speaking engagement and little did I know there was a problem with my Visa which is not a good habit to get into.
My traveling companion, Sandro, was clear of passport control and was making his way to the departure lounge but I was being kept in a windowless room whilst police and army scrutinised my passport and kept passing it from one important looking person to another.
“You cannot leave Iran – you must stay” the very official man said to me. He had a massive smile and was covered in stripes and insignia on his uniform to indicate he was a man of an elevated position. “You are in my country illegally” And he was quiet correct as it happened and just doing his job.
By this point, I was beyond rescue. However I began thinking it might be OK to live in Iran full time as it’s such a fabulous country. But think of Claire and my three smiling children waving to me at the airport. My daughter without a Daddy. How terrible.
But living in Iran full-time did sound pleasant. I could make a honest living training and speaking, pick up Farsi, get a chic apartment in the exclusive north of Tehran after all I had made some really good friends in the last week and we could party every night…..
No, I came to my senses. No I must get home to my family. They need me. “Please Sir, can you explain the problem with my Visa?” I grovelled at the official. I.d been taught to grovel at an early age and it usually worked.
“It says on the Visa that you can be in my country for 5 days…but you have been here for 6 days.”
Talk about detail and yes, I’d goofed big time. Hugely…what a mistake to make. And I promised myself to always attend to detail in the future. Never lose your attention to detail– it could take you away from your family.
In sales and coaching, we do have to concentrate on the detail and it’s plainly not everyone’s “cup of tea”. Contracts, marketing brochures, sales plans, sales meeting preparation, stocking your brief case ready for meetings, knowing the benefits of products, checklists for training courses, planning probing questions to reveal client problems, emailing actions, quarterly objectives….the list goes on.
Some people prefer to focus on the big picture and detest detail but others enjoy wallowing in the small print. But my lesson from Iran was to check the detail more often and if you don’t want to then hire or delegate someone to do it for you.
When they finally let me go through passport control I was the most thankful man on this planet. And I won’t make the same mistake again.
Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visitwww.archertraining.co.uk or his sales blog at www.paularcher.com
In the movie Jerry Maguire, when Tom Cruise is in the midst of his proposal to Dorothy, she stops him with, “You had me at hello.” Every seller dreams of hearing those exact same words when they approach corporate decision makers.
Unfortunately, the opposite usually occurs. Instead of capturing their prospect’s attention, most sellers create resistance with their opening remarks and blow the opportunity.
Why do bad things like that happen to good people?
In short, weak value propositions.
If you’re running into trouble cracking into corporate accounts, most likely the root cause is your failure to clearly articulate the business outcomes that customers realize from using your products, services or solutions.
A couple weeks ago, I did a new exercise while training a group of sellers. In small groups, they rated common value propositions that sellers could use when prospecting for new customers.
Using a 1-10 (tops) scale, they evaluated value propositions such as these on their effectiveness in initiating change from the status quo:
__ We offer one-stop shopping for all your (fill in the blank) needs.
__ We’re the industry leader in (fill in the blank) and have been
recognized for our exceptional (fill in the blank).
__ We specialize in ( fill in the blank) and work with well-known
clients such as Microsoft, Best Buy and Kraft.
After serious discussion amongst the sellers, these value propositions received scores between 4-6. Their rationale? They were nice benefit statements about the company, but not quite as punchy as they could have been.
Since my book, Selling to Big Companies, was required reading prior to the session, I assumed these sellers would ace this exercise. Not so! In fact, they were way off.
The truth is that all the above value propositions really deserve a score of one. Not four. Not six. Just a measly score of one.
“C’mon, Jill,” you might be saying. “How can that be? They’re not horrible statements. They’re nice.”
Yes, they are nice. I’ll give you that. But they’re grossly ineffective and that’s why they rated so poorly.
Capturing the Decision Maker’s Attention
While those commonly used value propositions listed above might be important at some point in the decision process, they’re totally and utterly worthless when prospecting.
When it comes to capturing a decision maker’s attention, here’s what you need to think about:
Strong value propositions pique curiosity and entice. When prospects hear them, they want to learn more.
Strong value propositions create a stark contrast from the status quo. When prospects hear them, they’re willing to consider making a change.
Consider this: If you were on the other end of the phone and a seller called with this message, what would your impression be?
“Eric. Jill Konrath calling from Selling to Big Companies. We offer one-stop shopping for all your sales training needs – everything from lead generation to closing. We use state-of-the-art methodologies to ensure our training sticks.”
Does it entice you? Not one iota. Does it get you to consider switching sales training vendors? Not likely. Does it make you want to invest lots of money that’s currently allocated elsewhere? Not on your life.
Statements about your company and what it does are NOT value propositions. Period. They are not value propositions.
If you want to get decision makers “at hello”, you need to clearly articulate the results the customers can expect from using your product, service or solution. That’s results, spelled R-E-S-U-L-T-S.
For example, a few months ago I trained the national accounts team of a well-known media company. All sellers identified one large corporate client with whom they wanted to set up a meeting.
As a result of the workshop, 87% of the sales force landed an appointment with their targeted account.
Those outcomes are unheard of in my business. Virtually every Vice President of Sales will want to learn more.
That’s the power of a strong value proposition. Even decision makers who weren’t considering a change will think it’s worth their time to find out about the sellers offering.
If you really want to “get them at hello,” then make sure you:
Talk results.
Decision makers don’t care about your products or services. They only care about the results they’ll see. Stress that and you’ll catch their attention. Omit those results and you’ve lost them.
Get real.
Refer to actual client successes and include measures or statistics. Success stories from other companies in their industry are especially compelling. By giving specific examples, you really pique their curiosity.
Test your message.
After you’ve planned what to say, ask, “If I were the decision maker, would this message entice me? Would it make me want to spend an hour of my valuable time with this person?”
If your answer isn’t a resounding yes, rework and revise your message till it is enticing. Don’t leave it to chance. Don’t hope that it will work. Your job is to make it so compelling that your decision makers “get it at hello.”
Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com
The next time you have a customer who is objecting to your price for your product or service, here’s a little quotation that’ll remind you how business works.
“It is unwise to pay too much, but it is unwise to pay too little. When you pay too much you lose a little money and that is all, but when you pay too little you sometimes lose everything, because the thing that you have bought isn’t capable of doing the thing which it was bought to do.”
“The common law of business balance prohibits you from paying a little and receiving a lot – it can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder it would be as well to add something for the risk you run, and if you can so that you can afford to buy something better.”
John Ruskin 1819 – 1900
Paul Archer is an international sales speaker, sales trainer, author and coach based in the UK. He specializes in rapport selling and rapport coaching and can ignite his audiences large or small. For more information on Paul and his training courses, visitwww.archertraining.co.uk or his sales blog at www.paularcher.com
Earlier today I got an email from a seller who’d just read my article on naked selling. He shared with me how he does it – which I thought was a great idea too.
Then it hit me. Most of you haven’t read it yet. So I’m bringing it back. Enjoy!
——-
My daughter went to a small college in Northern Iowa that’s famous for two two things: an excellent music program and … (drum roll) … Coed Naked Soccer. Every year some students manage to sneak a game in despite the administration’s warning of dire consequences if they’re caught.
What does that have to do with sales?
This past week, I talked with two sellers who are having extraordinary success right now. Their business is skyrocketing. Pricing is virtually a non-issue.
And all this happened once they started going into sales calls totally, stark-raving naked.
At least that’s how they felt when they stopped bringing their brochures into meetings with prospective buyers. Armed with only a notebook and pen, they had nothing to hide behind.
They couldn’t direct the prospect’s attention to the marketing collateral. They couldn’t point out hot new features. They couldn’t show the exciting new technologies. They couldn’t display their incredible portfolio of work.
Instead, they sat there naked – totally vulnerable – with their prospect staring at them. Waiting. Watching.
Without the brochure, they were forced to focus on the prospect’s business. They asked questions about how it was going. They explored the challenges and the issues the prospect was concerned about. They discussed the prospect’s goals, ideas and expectations.
And, because they were naked, with no brochures to fall back on even if they wanted to, they ended up having totally client-focused conversations.
The prospects loved it. They felt valued and understood. They felt like the reps cared and were concerned. They asked for the rep’s advice and even wanted specific recommendations.
Despite this final temptation to pull out a brochure, these reps suggested a second meeting as the next step. They got it – and shortly thereafter ended up with bigger contracts than even they could have imagined at the beginning.
If you’re one of those salespeople who relies heavily on your marketing collateral or samples, try shedding them for awhile.
Go naked into your sales calls. Have a discussion – not a pitch. It won’t be long before you too start seeing the difference it makes!
P.S. Here’s Fred Barker’s suggestion. He’s the guy that wrote me earlier today:
Having great disdain for going into a meeting completely naked, I now take my note pad plus a company pen and extra pad for the person with whom I’m meeting. My prospects use the notepad to take notes, which keeps our company name and logo in front of them.
Sounds like a great idea to me!
Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com
Calling Don Diggerman was always painful. Much as I wanted to do business with his company, I dreaded talking to him. I’d sit at my desk, staring at the phone, trying to figure out how I could avoid dealing with that man.
But it was just wishful thinking. The decision rested on Don’s shoulders and unless I won him over, one of my competitors would get the order.
When I couldn’t delay any longer, I’d close my eyes, take a long deep breath, and then slowly exhale. Over and over, perhaps twenty times or more. To the casual observer, it might have looked like I was meditating in the middle of the office. In reality, I was calming myself down before I called him.
You’re probably wondering what was so awful about this man that caused me to go through all those gyrations. Was he abusive, ornery, or downright mean? Was he sneaky, manipulative or slimy?
No, this man was not an ogre. He was the nicest man in the whole wide world. Kind. Gracious. Warm. Everyone loved him – even me.
It was just that talking to him required a tremendous effort on my part. You see, Don was the slowest talker I’ve ever met.
When I’d catch him on the phone, I’d say something like, “Don, Jill Konrath calling.”
“Oooooh, Jiiiiiilll,” he’d say ever so slowly. “Howwwww niiiiiiiiice of youuuuuuu to caaaaaall. Weeeeeee’ve beeeeeeeen taaaaalking abooooout commmmming in for a deeeemooonstraaation, buuuuuut caaaaan’t deeeeeciiiiiiiide if Tuuuuuuuesdaaaaay or Thurrrrrsdaaaaay is beeeeeettttter.”
It took him forever to say anything – and it drove me up a wall. But he never knew, because I’d respond, “Donnnn. Caaaaaaaan weeeeee doooooo it onnnnnnn Thurrrrrsdaaaaay? It’s beeeetter for meeeeeee.”
Our entire conversation went at that speed – on purpose. If I’d talked to him normally, I would have scared him away. My goal-oriented behavior was totally out of synch with his laid-back, slow-paced manner.
Because I recognized this, I made a conscious decision to relate to Don in a manner that made him feel comfortable. Maintaining this calm demeanor was certainly not one bit relaxing for me though.
But, it wasn’t about me. It was about my customer. I was treating him the way he wanted to be treated. And that’s a good thing.
Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, helps sellers crack into corporate accounts, shorten sales cycles and win big contracts. She’s a frequent speaker at annual sales meetings, kick-off events and professional conferences. For timely and provocative sales advice, visit www.SellingtoBigCompanies.com
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