It’s easy for us to fall into ruts in our thinking. Especially when money is at stake, it can be hard to acknowledge that our way of doing things is flawed or needs improvement. As a salesperson, your task is to help your prospect better see the problem they are facing, but often this involves giving your prospect a change in perspective. From where they stand, they may not be able to see the problem clearly. Shifting your prospect’s perspective may be necessary.
Daniel Pink recommends implementing a jolt of the unfamiliar to help your prospect achieve clarity. By introducing some random variable or perspectival shift, you can bring in contrasts or better comparisons for your prospect. These changes could be physical (environmental) or perspectival.
Physical changes
Changes in a person’s environment can change their outlook on a problem or solution. To illustrate this, consider a detective interviewing a suspect. The interrogation room is set up in a way that tries to make the suspect more open and truthful. While this is a quite different scenario from a selling situation, we can take certain principles from this.
Our physical environment can affect a lot about our outlook. Introducing some physical change can sometimes help your prospect see their problem from a new angle. For example, your prospect may be more open to changing the status quo if they are meeting you in a coffee shop than they would be sitting behind their office desk. A coffee shop is more of a relaxed environment that facilitates conversation. Thus, if possible, it may be beneficial for you to consider the physical environment in which you speak with a prospect.
Perspectival changes
You can also use your language to shift a prospect’s perspective. Instead of just talking about the here and now, ask your prospect to broaden his or her perspective. What are their company goals for the next five years? Have they looked at their problem from the angle of one of their customers or employees? If the product or service you are offering could help them achieve these goals, help them come to this conclusion on their own. Sometimes all it takes for them to see their problem more clearly is for them to look at it from a different angle.
Changing the perspective of your prospect, whether from a physical or linguistic angle, can help your prospect see their problem and your solution with greater clarity.
testacr22
This is so good, David! I think customers (and people) are usually hesitant to viewing something differently, so you have to help them do so without offending them. I think your proposed methods are spot on!