Whose Line is it Anyway? and a sales meeting may not seem to have much in common. However, at this point in my life, I have done a fair amount of both. There are certain aspects of each that feel exactly the same. One of the improv groups that I run is called Scriptless in Seattle. The name, other than alluding to a 90s rom com with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, suggests that everything the group performs everthing without a script. All the scenes and sketches and songs are written right in front of the audience. No where is there a set of lines or characters written down that we perform our scenes from. But, the longer I have done this, the more I have realized that there is a script of sorts. It is not printed in ink or labored over by some stuffy playwrite in a corner coffee shop on a rainy day. It is right in front of you. Improvised comedian and regular on Whose Line, Colin Mochrie, says that your resources is the performer you’re on stage with. The best ideas come from reacting to them. The more I’ve learned to treat those on stage around me like a de facto “script,” the better I have gotten. The same principle is true in sales conversations. If you go into a conversation with a planned set of points you want to hit or a list of features and benefits you want to enumerate, you are missing the mark. The best sales conversations I’ve ever had have come from ideas posed by the client, not strategies I had drawn up or phrases I had wordsmithed before hand. Sometimes the client says something that gives me an idea for a whole new way of selling it, and a whole new line of questioning to get there. Sometimes clients are looking for certain applications from your product or service that you don’t normally lead with and may not have even realized you can do. Improv– and sales– is listening. It seems like it’s speaking or telling, but its listening and reacting. That’s all.
BoweryJE22