Tell me if this sounds familiar.
The salesperson walks into the meeting and it starts off pretty much like this:
“Dear mr. Customer, let me start by telling you about our business. We were incorporated during the time of medieval feudalism in Europe, and we’re the biggest and best company in our business. In fact, you should consider yourself lucky that we’ve taken time out of our busy schedule to be with you today.”
Then after the salesperson has expounded on all the glory of their employer, they then launch straight into telling the customer about their product- the customer still hasn’t said much more than hello – and how magnificent it is.
Naturally, this is done by going into excruciating (for the customer) levels of detail and might sound something like this:
“Mr. Customer The ALX 6750 can run at full capacity for a total of 6 minutes. It’s RPM is an incredible 1.200, and it runs at 500 Gigahertz per minute with a total uptime of 96%.”
(The sharp reader will notice that these product specs are made up)
At this point most salespeople will still not allow their customer a lot of airtime, because they are busy going diving into more of the technical details.
They might continue like this:
“What’s even more amazing with this product, is that it uses cellular technology with state of the art integrated circuits running machine learning and fully integrated with the Geronimo platform.”
On and on it goes, until the customer is completely overwhelmed with all the information that’s just been thrown their way, and they have no idea of how to navigate it all.
At this point, they’ve been mostly passive for the better part of an hour, and are unsure what to think or what to do – and they are by no means any closer to making a buying decision than they were when the salesperson walked through the door (or appeared on screen as it were).
What happens next is the number one reason why sales don’t happen
The sales-person says something to the effect of:
“And all of this magnificence can be yours for the grand total of 2.500$ per month – whaddayasay?”
The customer of course will say something like:
“Uh, um – yeah, it looks great. I’ll need to think about it and review it with some of my people internally. Can you send me the presentation, and then we’ll get back to you?”
Now pay attention, because this next part here is crucial.
You now have an understanding of what most customers go through, in most sales-meetings and you understand why most customers feel overwhelmed and prefer to not make a buying decision.
So the number one reason why sales don’t happen is because the sales-person hasn’t motivated the customer from their point of view.
They haven’t engaged with the customer, they haven’t shown that they care, and they haven’t expressed any sort of interest in understanding the customer.
Ask – then tell.
Not the other way around.
Or in other words.
Be like the owl.
Be curious.
Be patient.
Be wise.