M&Ms or Sour Patch Kids?

The newest topic we’ve gone over in class is Mattson’s Core Concept #2: “Don’t spill your candy in the lobby.” Imagine it. You’re so excited to go to the movie theater to see a new movie that you’ve been waiting to come out for ages. You stand in line to get your ticket and then stand in another line to get some insanely overpriced candy, painfully deliberating between M&Ms and Sour Patch Kids. You finally have both your ticket and candy in hand, a few minutes before the movie to spare, when you trip over a small bump in the theater carpet… and spill all of your anticipated candy all over the grimy floor, never to be recovered. Just like that, your box of candy is empty and you walk into the movie with a little less joy.

Mattson uses this idea of spilling your candy in the lobby as an analogy of sales, the candy being your knowledge and expertise. Salespeople are all too eager to tell the prospect everything they know about their product without actually listening to the needs of the customer. This comes back to what Coach was talking about in the pen analogy. Some salespeople are so focused on the third party, the object that they’re trying to sell, that they give way too much information and don’t focus enough on the second party, the prospect. Really, in an initial part of a sales call, you need to keep your candy in the box (aka you need to keep your knowledge in your head, let the prospect talk, and wait until the opportune moment to share some of your expertise).

A good sales process depends upon patience and a way to build trust with clients. The stage where you build rapport and with your customer and find out as much information about them and their pain as you can is crucial and cannot be skipped. It is important then, to continually bring the conversation back to fact-finding and asking them questions about their need. This is a perfect gateway to a pain funnel, and you can’t sell to a person whose pain you do not understand, which is why this step is so incredibly important in the sales process.

So, your task in a sales meeting is not to dump all your candy on the floor, but to gather as much information as you can to qualify the prospect. Like Professor Sweet said, “when your presentation takes place prior to the stages of Bonding/Rapport and Pain, you have ‘spilled your candy in the lobby’.” So which one would you choose, M&Ms or Sour Patch Kids? Either way, don’t spill it in the lobby!