227: Salespeople Need to Have Self-Awareness

<p>Listen well enough to the client’s needs.  They miss the key cues, misunderstand the problem, can’t override their fixation on what they want and do most of the talking during the sales call.  They wonder why getting an agreement to buy is so hard.</p> <p> </p> <p>One of my sales coaching students was relating how he took the client meeting into negative territory from the very kick off of the sales conversation and then proceeded to dig the hole deeper and deeper for himself.  Small talk at the start is needed to set the foundation for building the trust, as buyer and seller get to know each other.  In this case, the small talk conversation went into a death spiral.  This is when the redirect button is pushed to make it more meaningful for the buyer.</p> <p> </p> <p>In this case, he just lent harder on the shovel and dug faster.  If we find things are not going well, then stop talking and start asking questions.  This allows the buyer to feel in more control to direct things the way they want them and for you to regroup and prepare to take back the reins of the conversation.  Usually we have the selling plan, but the buyer doesn’t have the buying plan.  They are wandering around with no direction in mind, because they expect to hear what they need from us.  We need to keep that conversation on track.</p> <p> </p> <p>Our intrepid hero was sadly successful in convincing the client to buy the thing which would have zero return.  When we had our coaching session together, I was drilling down into what would the client get in return for their hard earned money, based on the conversation that had covered what the client was trying to achieve.  It was obviously zero value for the client but good for the seller, who was having trouble moving this product.  Great, but this destroys your reputation in the market.  You do get the sale and usually the size of the sale is a peanut, as it is the first sale.  You blow all your credibility at the start and then the client tells everyone in town you are radioactive and to be