Have you ever talked yourself out of a sale?
- Are you "selling" ...or "telling"
- Highlight a potential problem
- Get the prospect talking about it...then shut up!
YAKKETY YAK
Here's a reliable selling principle: During any given sales meeting, the prospect should be mostly talking and the salesperson mostly listening. This principle is especially important during initial sales meetings.
David Sandler suggested that the prospect should be talking about 70 percent of the time. Typically, however, the opposite occurs. The salesperson feels compelled to talk about as many features, benefits, and unique selling points of his product or service as time permits...in an attempt to "capture the prospect's interest."
If the prospect merely wants a rundown on the technical details of your product or service, he can simply visit your website or read your marketing brochure. Investing time to meet with you would not be necessary.
"SELLING" - OR "TELLING?"
"Selling" is not about "telling." It's about helping the prospect relate your product or service to the satisfaction of his wants and needs. It's also about helping him discover needs of which he was previously unaware. How do you accomplish this? By asking thought-provoking questions and then listening...really listening.
Let's examine the difference. Telling sounds like this:
"Our software analyzes warehousing and distribution costs in relation to regional sales patterns and identifies areas for cost saving. In more than 72 percent of the studies performed in the last 12 months, we've discovered typical savings of between 19 and 34 percent across a range of industries. Yakkety, 24/7 support."
Informative? To a degree. Thought to provoke? Not particularly. You might as well hand the prospect a brochure and conduct a read-along!
Selling requires that you engage the prospect. You can educate and stimulate interest by means of a thought-provoking question much more effectively than you can by citing features and benefits. Here's an example of selling by means of an engaging question:
"If you had a way to analyze your warehousing and handling costs, and compare them to your regional sales patterns so you could determine exactly how much money you're wasting now on excess capacity...what do you suppose you'd discover?"
Informative...and provocative! This kind of question engages the prospect by highlighting a specific potential problem - wasted investment in excess capacity. It stimulates a conversation about how useful it would be to be able to reliably analyze the situation. It gets the prospect talking.
When you get the prospect talking, shut your mouth; don't interrupt. You can open your ears or you can open your mouth, but you can't do both at the same time. Let the prospect finish, then ask questions or make comments. And, don't think about what you're going to say until the prospect has finished speaking. If you're thinking about what you are going to say...you're not listening!
You can lose a sale by talking too much. But you'll never, ever lose a sale by listening too much.
