For the past couple days in class we have been doing the Hot Seat sales experience. Overall, I think people have been doing very well! A lot of people have been following the 70/30 rule by asking the prospect probing questions and listening to their responses and then following up with more questions. Going into the hot seat I was a little worried because my last experience with the hot seat which was closer to the beginning of the semester and it was not good. I fumbled around with my questions, and when I finally did ask questions, they were not very good and were quickly turned around on me so I would do most of the talking. After going through the semester and learning some tactics such as the 1-10 range with the follow up question “why didn’t you choose a lower number”, budget and pain questions, and not giving away too much information right off the bat. With these tactics, along with many other sales rules and concepts we learned throughout the semester this helped me improve my hot seat selling. If I do decide to pursue a career in sales, I will be sure to remember the tactics and concepts that professor Sweet taught me throughout the semester!

5 thoughts on “Hot Seat”
  1. The hot seat can definitely be intimidating. We saw the hot set eat people alive all semester and it came for one final blow at the end. I think you did a great job of applying things you learned in the class to have a much better hot seat experience than the first time. Attacking budget and pain is tough to do, but I think you did a great job of feeling around these topics and asking great questions. Great job Dave!

  2. I love the ‘why didn’t you choose a lower number lesson’. It is a reverse psychology kind of thing that makes people say out loud the good parts of your company rather than the bad. This is a perfect tactic, but most people do the opposite and in turn get people saying the negative things about their company deterring them even more. Good recap!

    Have a wonderful last couple weeks and good luck in your finals!!

  3. The hot seat was very intimidating! I thought you did well though with the 70/30 rule, it is very hard in some situations to keep that rule in mind but i thought you did it well! Great post!

  4. The hot seat was very interesting to observe. I agree it was intimidating and it was really cool whenever a couple curve balls were thrown in there. The 70/30 rule is a great tool to use in situations like that.

  5. In general, I think that hot seats, and being put on the spot like this will always be tough. In this class it was so important to let your customer do the talking. In your sales conversation you were kind of thrown a curveball, and I think you did a great job handling that.

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