While it may seem counterintuitive, one of the most essential skills in the sales process is being able to prevent your client from feeling like they’re being sold to. As the Sandler Rulebook says, The Best Sales Presentation You Will Ever Give, The Prospect Will Never See. In other words, you must never tell the prospect why they should buy from you; rather, your job is to help them discover reasons to buy from you seemingly on their own. Once again we return to the cardinal rule of sales – ask questions, then some more questions, and follow it up with a few more questions.
Earlier this semester we discussed the phrase, “People don’t want to be sold to, but they love to buy.” That axiom continues to be true, you can tell the prospect every feature of your product, know the specs from top to bottom, but if you don’t let the sale be driven by them then you’ve made a serious mistake. So you might ask, exactly how do you sell without looking like you’re selling?
The answer is surprisingly simple, the sales process works best as a dialogue – not as a monologue. You as the sales person are responsible for keeping the prospect talking, asking good questions, and finding out good information. Selling isn’t done through a proposal, the true selling is done in the long interrogative part of the process. You can’t tell the prospect why they need to buy, they need to find out “for themselves” – led by you as the salesperson. If you’ve done your job well in the questioning phase, then the ultimate close should be nothing more than a formality – with the prospect already having effectively decided to purchase long before. That’s the shift in mindset that separates good salespeople from great ones. Stop thinking of your presentation as the moment you close the deal. Think of your presentation as every single question you ask, every fact you discover. The best presentation you’ll ever give is the one your prospect never sees coming. And one they’ll never forget.
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This is a great post! I like how you have captured how the core idea of selling is about guiding the prospect rather than delivering a premade pitch. The process of forming a unique relationship with every client, with every client being different, is key to sales.
This is a great post and does a good job of summarizing the importance of this skill. It is very true that people dislike when they know that they are being sold to. So, it is important that we take from this so that we know how to maneuver their deflections they throw at us sellers.