Greg Bennett's Rambling Thought #18
Greg Bennett's Rambling Thought on Successful Selling #18: Sales is Full of Opposites
I like to occasionally shut my brain down and think about ideas and concepts I've had in the past while - doing client work, training salespeople, or drinking in a bar. One thing that popped up out of the abyss was that "Sales is full of opposites" -- what we think, imagine, or believe would be the truth, or the norm...is exactly the opposite when it comes to selling.
Here are some examples:
- We THINK the more we talk and explain our product the smarter we will appear...the exact opposite is true; the less we talk, and the more we let the client talk, the smarter we will appear...
- We IMAGINE we will burn out in sales by prospecting hard every day and filling the pipeline with new prospects...the exact opposite is true; we will burn out in sales by NOT prospecting hard every day and by not filling with the pipeline with new prospects...
- We BELIEVE clients will not like us if we go to NO in a sales call...the exact opposites is true; clients will like us MORE if we are waving around the reality of NO...
- We THINK we can save more sales by getting a MAYBE vs a NO...the exact opposite is true; we will save more sales by Embracing NO and getting at underlying reasons than we will playing the guessing-then-stalking game we play in the Neutral Zone...
- We IMAGINE we will be bothering clients if we contact them after they buy to see how they're doing...the exact opposite is true; what is really going to "bother" clients is when we DON'T contact them after they buy...or EVER!!
There are many more I could list, but you get the point.
While there are opposites in all areas of life, why are there SO many in sales? I believe the main reasons are -- the whole 'Role playing' thing: where we step into roles of seller and client and act out of the roles vs our "normal selves"...and the Conflict Avoidance issue...the fear of conflict causes us act in ways we normally wouldn't in order to avoid a particularly touchy situation.
So what do we do with this knowledge? I believe we stay aware of it and just do a "Costanza" (you remember in that Seinfeld episode where George decides to do the exact opposite of everything his instincts tell him to do?)...and what do you know, everything works out!
GB
(Just one of Greg Bennett's "99 Rambling Thoughts on Successful Selling")
