Written by Michael Oliver, Natural Selling Sales Trainer, Best Selling Author, Speaker and Consultant
When I had an office way back in my foolish days, a sales rep came in one day and asked me what business I was in. I told him, and he asked if I had a few minutes to see whether a service he was offering might be able to help me!
I liked that! Nice start! He got me at hello! He sat down and for the next 5 minutes gave me a pitch using phrases like;
- This is what we do
- Let me show you how you can benefit from this
- If you’re not doing this already this is what you should be doing
- I’ve found the best way to do this
- We’ve got the best
In two minutes my mind was elsewhere.
Why wasn’t this working for me?
What wasn’t working was, I didn’t care what he thought! I didn’t care being told what I should do without him understanding what I’m already doing, etc. I didn’t feel involved!
You might ask yourself the same thing. Do you talk with people and tell them what you think they should hear?
Do you think they really care about what YOU think? Come to that, do you really care what I think?!!!
If you do, here again is the secret to successful Natural Selling!
Find out information before you give it!
Whether they will listen to you is also in direct proportion to whether they believe you understand them! This means gathering and feeding back information by asking the right types of questions (very easily learned) and listening with an OPEN EAR.
Then you’ll have all the information you need to make a presentation in a way they relate to.
So, instead of saying:
- This is what we do. Ask instead, what are you looking for?
- Let me show you how you can benefit from this. Ask instead, so why is that important to you?
- If you’re not doing this already this is what you should be doing. Ask instead have you thought about doing it another way?
- I’ve found the best way to do this. Ask instead, what if there was another way that could get you the results you’re looking for?
- We’ve got the best. Ask instead, what if you could do it another way that would better suit you?
That’s it! Discover first. Present second! They have all the information so save yourself a lot of trouble and ask them!
