The 17th Sandler rule is “The professional does what he did as a dummy, on purpose”. In simpler terms, Sandler is telling us that one of the biggest temptations we as salesmen can make is to appear more knowledgeable about our products by dumping all we know about the product or service in the beginning of the conversation instead of asking insightful and conversation stimulating questions in order to get to the main pain points. I actually made this mistake on my first demonstration when selling Cutco to my neighbors. I had memorized the prices, functions, warranty details, almost everything. They unfortunately did not end up buying anything from me, at least not for a few weeks after they discussed it, but what really made me slap my palm to my forehead was that I had not realized that I spoke the whole time and asked very little questions. I figured that if I could just answer their questions with the facts they would be persuaded. It would take more training and meetings with my manager to understand that asking questions that left the floor for the customer to elaborate on why or why not they thought the product was right for them were extremely helpful in closing the sale.
BoweryJE22