When Coach DiDonato spoke in class, he explained his sales tunnel. It included finding out what the customer’s needs were, making the customer aware of those needs, showing the customer the solution, and then satisfying the needs. Before recruiting high schoolers, Coach DiDonato has four of Grove City’s core strengths identified and then finds out through asking quality questions whether or not the student has a need for Grove City’s strengths. He then brings the student to discover exactly what it is that they’re looking for and then offers them a solution that Grove City has. This reminded me of a selling technique that Jim and Dwight tried out on The Office, which is included by clicking the picture below.
While this is not followed completely, there is a scene in the office where Jim and Dwight are selling to a customer. After offering their prices, the customer does not seem interested. However, Jim and Dwight know that their strengths do not lie in their prices, but in their service. Jim and Dwight are able to effectively highlight their strengths in this respect. They first find out if the customer does have a need for customer service, make their customer aware of his need, offer a solution, and then seal the deal. This is similar to Coach DiDonato’s Sale’s Funnel.
This, of course, is not complete. While it did work out for them now, it seemed like Jim asked a very leading question, not necessarily an open-ended question that could end in a fruitful dialogue. However, maybe given more time, they would have asked more questions. I think that Jim and Dwight’s ideal situation would have been for them to have a longer dialogue with their client and then see if there was a need, rather than pitch their prices and then create a need. However, this obviously worked out for them in the end.
BoweryJE22
This is great, can never go wrong with The Office. On top of that, your post was a great read. I totally agree with your points on Jim asking leading questions, it seems throughout the show there is a lot more of them talking the 70% of the time and only listening 30%, obviously for good reason being they are the main characters, but they also can be used as examples on what not to do in selling situations.