Sandler’s Rule #16

In last week’s lecture from Professor Sweet, rule #16 really stuck out to me. Rule #16 is to never ask for the order – make the prospect give up. Within rule #16, with conventional sales wisdom, you must be sure to ask for the order. As a salesperson, you must do this because this gives the buyer power and control of the sales process to the prospect; you are beholden to them. So, asking for the order means that this process is not leading to a mutual decision. Instead, it is more of a recognition that the business relationship will be mutually beneficial. Also, “making the prospect give up” doesn’t mean that you badger them until they can’t take it anymore. It doesn’t mean that you apply pressure during the sales process to force a decision. Furthermore, it also doesn’t mean that you are using extraordinarily persuasive or to be presenting to “close”. “Giving up” rather means that they are giving up on finding other alternative solutions. Also, that they are giving up on lingering doubts about you and your solution. A tip that could help find a solution for the client is by asking a series of question that led to mutual agreement in the context of joint discovery that it might make sense to do business together. Some of those questions could be: “Is that something you’d like us to do for you?” “What do we do now?” “What should happen next?”. Overall, “closing” questions should be casual and informational as colleague to colleague. It can also be a statement like, “tell me what happens from here…”. As a salesperson, this requires rapport and trust for this to work; if you don’t have rapport and trust at this point, you won’t get the sale anyway. To conclude, Sandler does a very good job at hitting points about the salesperson to not be too pushy to close, and to take them down a pain funnel through a series of questions.