When I was preparing for my sales presentation at the end of this semester, I spent most of my preparation time looking over all the different techniques to throw the client off (in a good way, of course). Though we have talked about many, many good ways to bring the unexpected to a sale in class, one particular skill caught my eye. One of my favorite ways to keep the client on their toes (and thus invested in the conversation and sale itself) is the use of a negative reversal.
Defined as “doing something the prospect does not expect from a salesperson,” a negative reversal can mean a lot of different things. Doing something a client doesn’t expect is not necessarily exclusive to any singular idea, and thus there is no one way to execute a negative reversal. My favorite way to employ a negative reversal is just by throwing out the option of something not working right at the beginning. Near the start of the conversation, as you are trying to get to know the customer, I think it’s both unexpected and very helpful to toss out something simple, like, “If you don’t feel like this is going anywhere, we don’t need to keep discussing this. I don’t want to waste either of our time.” Whenever you say something like that, it makes the customer reevaluate whether or not they truly want to be there, and if they don’t, you’ve saved yourself a ton of time.
And this is a skill that is not only useful in sales, but in life. I think a great application of a negative reversal is in the world of dating. If you date someone who you don’t think you see a future with, you are wasting both of your times by continuing to pursue that. In that scenario, a negative reversal would be a helpful thing to toss out – just by asking, “Do you think this is going anywhere? If it isn’t, that’s totally fine, but we don’t need to continue doing this.” It will make the other person think twice about the situation that they’re in, and that kind of thought and communication will lead to better relationships overall.
BoweryJE22