Let’s start with this:  I’ll admit something right now (and you should, too):  I’ve never been a good enough salesman to sell anything to anyone unless they wanted to buy it.  And, since I began training more than twenty-five years ago, I’ve never met anyone who was.

Fact is, prospects have to want to buy.  So, a good starting place is to understand why anyone would WANT to buy.

Sure there are hundreds of reasons, but few motivations.  I’ve found four:  Fear, gain, pride, and imitation.

Rules to Write on the Wall – In Oil-Based Paint

1. A prospect will not buy from you – and an existing customer will NEVER ‘buy UP’ – as long as s/he is satisfied with the current situation.
   
2. The space between where a prospect/customer/client IS and where they WANT to be represents your ‘opportunity gap.’
   
3. Most people live in fear.  They hate unknowns.  They hate the uncomfortable, the unfamiliar.  They like comfort.  They won’t move forward until they associate pain to staying in their current situation.  They must become dissatisfied.
4. Your job is to help them think long-term… to facilitate a `strategic planning’ process, including the goal-setting, they need.  Yes, Virginia, you do it with questions. 

Get them talking beyond their current situation (which they may find depressing and won’t solve much) to what the problems and implications of those issues are.  And, get a dollar value on each one. 

What questions do you ask?   I use what I call my “Three Golden Questions” that probe their past successes and failures, as well what they want to achieve in the future.  The Three Golden Questions create leverage!  When you have leverage on YOUR side, the sale becomes much easier to ‘lift’.     You can download my article for creating leverage using these questions here.  The point is, you want to probe their business lives – and dreams.

As the questioning process unfolds, they will tell you what they want to do… and you will  begin to see the symptoms of real, genuine interest!   In fact, you’ll begin hearing specific questions on how YOU can solve their problems.  Don’t be anxious to ‘take the bait’.  Make them sell YOU on their sincere desire to change their present situation.

Listen for Motivation

• Gain?  Gain buyers want to build, improve, grow, win, achieve, dominate, and all that stuff.  Frankly, these tend to be great clients because you almost never have to go through the song-and-dance of helping them get out of their own way.

  When I was selling advertising, my favorite ‘gain’ buyer was a chiropractor who was advertising everywhere, not just with me.  In just five years, he’d promoted his practice so well you could find people who’d swear they’d been going to him ten years longer than he’d been in practice!  The concept was simple:  The chiropractor who generates 500 impressions is perceived as having been around 10 times longer than the one who generates only 50 impressions, regardless of the calendar.  He practiced for ten years, sold the practice for a bundle, bought a building and retired.

• Fear?  As good as a ‘gain’ buyer, the ‘fear’ buyer is always afraid of something.  Maybe it’s the competition.  They feel like they must make moves to stay ahead.

• Pride?  This one’s easy to spot.  Some people will buy a certain car to be seen in it.  There are companies that will buy jets for no other reason than bragging rights.  I once had a merchant buy advertising only to see her daughter’s picture in the ads. 

  Once, back in the 1980s, a major metropolitan daily newspaper – which was losing money badly even back then – brought me in for a week to work with their organization.  My first clue as to why they were losing money came quickly – even before I made it to the company’s headquarters:  They put me in the Penthouse suite of the most expensive hotel in the city!  Any clues? 

  Write this down:  Top-down commitment gets bottom-up support.  Top-down stupid cannot be overcome at the organizational level.

• Imitation?  This is the easiest prospect to sell… and the hardest to keep.  They’re easy to spot.  They ‘follow a leader’.  They buy because someone else did.  They cancel the same way.  They’re big on fads and especially status.  Look for a Rolex, a Jaguar, you get the idea.

Take notes!   Resist the urge to start talking and bring out your fancy brochures, etc.  You shouldn’t even have them with you.  They should be in the car, remember? – Better yet, back at the office.

Keep asking follow-up questions.  It won’t be long before you’ll know the motivations, the problems, their implications, the value of the problem (and solution), and the `opportunity gap’ to be addressed.  It will happen.

Your prospect will WANT to know how you can help - and you haven’t shown a single brochure or talked about a single demographic data-point.  You haven’t talked about features, advantages, benefits, or any of those other Sales 101 goodies you been taught to regurgitate.

Your prospect wants a SOLUTION!

Forget the stepping-stones.  Sell the destination!

I can hear you now:  “Okay, Jim, can I ‘close’ the sale now?  Can I, huh?”

Wassa matter you?  Do you really believe this buyer will somehow magically NOT want to change his/her situation tomorrow?  Get real!  This buyer will ALWAYS want to change his/her present situation. 

It’s time to get smart:  GET OUT OF THERE – NOW! 

Get our your appointment book and set a date and time to meet again.  

“What?  Where’s the pitch?  Where’s the close?”

Where’s all that stuff we learned about just before the hotel battery-acid coffee cart is wheeled into the room with day-old Danish for the 15-minute break?

Trust me.  Your prospect WILL make the appointment. If the answer is ‘no’ at this point, you misread something badly before now.  You’re not losing a sale… you never had it! 

If you really want to lose the sale, just stay there and shoot yourself in the foot.  Why screw-up a great opportunity with a thoughtless solution?

Now’s a good time to talk to your manager and a few colleagues – anyone!  Start brainstorming solutions! 

Do some research.  Astound the prospect!  Add value to that title on your business card!  Be the professional we’re always telling ourselves we are!

Prove your value and your prospect’s choice becomes clear:  Buy from a professional (you, in case you’re still not sure), or a competing drooling commission clerk who’s only concern is a commission check.

Bring knowledge.  Bring value.  Bring ‘know-how’ – stuff that ISN’T in the media kit.   That prospect WILL buy from you.  And, you can bet your last motivational DVD collection on it.

I can hear the mumbles now.

“Who’s got time for all that?”

“That sounds good in theory, but in won’t work in the real world.”

Yada, yada, yada.

Au contrair…  It does work

It worked for me.  It’s worked for others.  It will work for you.

It would work for your mother!

Quit sounding like a prospect!!!

You may get paid by the transaction, but you don’t have to live by it.  If you add value, they will come to you with their buying for the rest of their natural lives.

You won’t have to sell a thing.   And, you won’t need no shtinking media kit.

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