There were a few ideas that really came to light in my sales conversation. The first was the 70/30 rule and trying to balance question asking without evading questions. This was really tough for me to do. It was so hard to not only think about the answer to the customer’s question, but to also think of a way to sort of not fully answer, and to turn it around into a question for them. Sweet ended up getting me a little trapped into question evasion because I did not want to talk about some things. It was tough to always try and turn the question around.
The second concept illustrated was the “go for no” concept. Coming into the sales conversation I was thinking to myself, “If it’s not a good fit, I should just try and say no.” It is so hard to do this in real life though. It is incredibly counterintuitive to push for a no-answer. So much so that I was not able to put this concept into action. I feel like the conversation started to turn into a beat around the bush cycle of questions that could have been avoided had I have gone for the no.
And finally, of course, buoyancy. My sales conversation did not turn out quite how I wanted it to but I had to realize that that really was not too important. I just needed to get up and keep going.
BoweryJE22
I completely agree. The 70/30 rule is a lot harder to adhere to when you have an inquisitive prospect, but practice will reveal patterns that can be followed. For some products it’s obvious your product will not be a good fit for the prospect, but it is still a difficult thing to miss out on a sale. Great reflections!
This is a great post! I agree with what you said about it sometimes not being a good fit and you need to say no. I feel like in the academic world of sales it is a lot easier to say that but in an actual real life scenario it really is a lot harder to say no.