In my opinion, Sandler rule #14 that states that “A Prospect Who is Listening is No Prospect at all” might be the most important rule that we have learned so far. I think this because I think the quality of most of the salespeople in our country could be much better. I think with the proper training and attitude companies could train their salesman much better and they would be able to understand this rule. Basically, it means that if your meeting with somebody and they are not asking questions and they are clearly disinterested then you will most likely have no future relationship with that prospect. I think a lot of salesman think that they can sell to absolutely anybody. You might be an incredible salesman. you might be able to sell to a lot of people. But nobody can sell anything to anybody. There are just cases where the relationship will not work. Every single person is different and there is no way that a salesman is can win every single one. Salesman spend the precious time they have on people that will eventually say no when it comes to the point of actually purchasing. When you are prospecting and then going through the sales process you do not have time to waste. Through the sales process people already are going to lose most all of their prospects. This means that spending even more time with people that shouldn’t even be considered prospects is a really bad idea. I think people just need to realize when a person doesn’t really care about what they have to sell. This is a skill and I’m sure that it is part of the reason people aren’t as good at it as they could be.
BoweryJE22
This is a really good point, and I think something that can also be really hard to do. When you have something that you think is valuable, it can be hard not to be excited and want to share that with the potential client. This is definitely something I will try to be good at as I work at selling.
Nice post. I totally agree with that this is a technique that needs to be worked on a lot by salesmen. How can you identify their need without them telling you? Good points on rule#14.
I agree with this. Over the weekend at startup weekend pittsburgh we were judged by a panel on our presentations. Following the presentations there was a Q&A session, and I noticed that a lot of the teams were answering the unasked question. It really seemed to take away from their overall presentation, and it showed when the results were announced.