In Sandler Rule #49, Mattson concludes that the salesperson must nurture his prospect’s Child, while suppressing his inner-Child. The Child is the ego state where we store feelings about right and wrongs, shoulds and shouldn’ts, and dos and don’ts. This ego state embodies a person’s feelings and how he reacts to a message.
Your prospect’s Child is the ego state that is critical to the buyer-seller reaction. In the end, the prospect’s Child must want what you have to sell. In other words, it is how they feel when they think about purchasing your product or service. It all begins with the Child. If this ego state does not give you the thumbs up, the sale is doomed from the start.
On the other hand, the salesperson’s Child must play no role at all in the sales process. This means he should neither look for approval or acceptance nor react in a negative manner when things aren’t going his way. If you fail to do this, you cannot be objective nor keep emotions in check. When your subjective nature along with your emotions come to the surface, the prospect will view you as a biased, non-credible source. The salesperson must withhold his inner-Child in order to conceal his self interests. This will inevitably lead to a more trusting environment and success during the sale process.
BoweryJE22
I think as human beings we often operate allowing our “inner child” to dictate how we interact with children. But I agree that as sales people it is important that we do not do this because we can not find our value from others or look for fulfillment in that sense.
Outside the sales meeting it is healthy to have a balance between the child, parent, and adult ego which often dictate our decisions and come out in our expressions. But inside a sales call I think it is very wise to leave the child completely out. Though the child ego is not all bad, a sales call is not the time for your inner child to be expressing what it wants or does not want. It can be very hard to do this but I think it is a good rule!
It is so important to remember to keep our emotions in check. I completely agree with this post, because we must remember to stay professional during a sale. Children tend to be more needy and self centered, but in a sale, we must remember to put that side of us away and focus on pleasing the customer.