Have you ever overwhelmed a prospect with product knowledge?
- Does your prospect know what you're talking about?
- Are you intimidating prospects needlessly?
- Monitor facial and body cues.
Your industry expertise and product knowledge can certainly be a professional asset - but you should also know that it can be intimidating to your prospects. If you use buzzwords, technical terms, or industry jargon early on in the selling process, before determining how familiar your prospect is with those terms, you run the risk of making your prospects uncomfortable. This is a major sin! An uncomfortable prospect is unlikely to make emotional investments in your sales process.
Prospects who don't understand what you are saying have two options.
Option one: They can be up-front and tell you that they simply couldn't make sense of some or all of what you said, and ask for an explanation. From your point of view, this is great when it happens, but be honest with yourself, this rarely happens. Why not? Because most people are simply uncomfortable asking for explanations. (This is particularly true when they're interacting with salespeople.)
Option two: They can remove the source of their discomfort: YOU! What would that sound like? Probably something like this:
Prospect: Well, Tom, I didn't realize that we would get into such detail today. I'm running a bit short of time. Why don't you leave the information and give me some time to review it, and then I'll get back to you.
Problem solved! No more discomfort.
Your product knowledge and expertise may enhance your confidence and make you feel more in control of your sales meetings. You should know, though, that flexing your intellectual muscles in front of your prospect may overwhelm him - especially when you're just starting your discussions.
During sales meetings, be sensitive to your prospect's facial expressions and body language. If you pick up any signal that you've made your prospect uncomfortable, back up. Say something like this:
You: Bill, I just ran through that information much too quickly. Let me back up.
Then review what you've said using more appropriate language.
