Leader's Beacon | The Leadership Experts

At the beginning of every sales call your prospect is making two critical buying decisions. The first decision is about the salesperson. Behavioral research states that initial impressions are created within the first 20 seconds of meeting someone. So it is critical to differentiate oneself and one’s offering in the initial phase of a meeting. The second buying decision that they make is about their willingness to share meaningful information. In today’s selling environment, the only real value a salesperson has is their ability to get valuable and sensitive information, not give it. Continue Reading

Other articles you might like:

• Deal or No Deal: Minimize “Definite Maybes”
• The New Hire — Doing It Right
• The Telephone — Sales Tool or Club
• Conquering the Fear of Closing
• Everybody and Nobody…The Decision Maker

It isn’t unusual that by the time salespeople get as far along in the sales process to learn how decisions are made, who are the players who make those decision and what is the timing of the decision, that they are so excited to have made it this far that they quickly skim over it and rush to the exciting part, which is the presentation. Or, if they do happen to superficially inquire about the decision process, they generally default to the “who” question. The “who” question alone will generally get you the wrong information. If you ask the non-decision maker if they are the decision maker and they answer yes, what they really heard, or better yet what their ego heard was, “Are you the decision maker to bring this to the final decision maker?” The flip side is when you ask the real decision maker who the decision maker is, that individual, feeling pressure, palms you off on a fictitious committee that allegedly makes a group decision letting them off the hook. Continue Reading

Other articles you might like:

• Conquering the Fear of Closing
• Terms of Engagement… To Get Trust You Must First Extend It
• Deal or No Deal: Minimize “Definite Maybes”
• Getting the Prospect to Return Your Call
• The Best Leaders: a Paradox

The most significant change in the selling landscape in the last 10 years has been the way prospects buy; sadly, not the way salespeople sell. It is just as important to understand and master the prospect’s buying process as it is for salespeople to master a systematic sales process. Continue Reading

Other articles you might like:

• The New Hire — Doing It Right
• The Telephone — Sales Tool or Club
• The Loneliest Job in the World
• Conquering the Fear of Closing
• Terms of Engagement… To Get Trust You Must First Extend It

Most companies and their salespeople covet their value add, their features and benefits, and their value proposition as if it were the Holy Grail. The reality is all value propositions are inherently valueless. The feature and benefit style of selling that has served companies so well in the past no longer works. It is tried, but no longer true.

Firms that have successfully relied on this kind of selling to differentiate themselves from their competition, translate their value, maintain their margins and avoid the dreaded price focus are discovering that this once-dependable method is backfiring. The irony is that in today’s highly competitive marketplace, where information runs freely, companies actually create the commoditization they work so hard to avoid.

Value added selling is rooted in old economic conditions using time-honored traditions, a sales strategy from another era entirely, some unimaginable distant epoch of 5-10 years ago. This artificial style of selling that, until recently, has withstood the test of time, only homogenizes your offering. Value proposition selling is just roll-the-dice selling, where you are on autopilot and you cross your fingers and show up and throw up. It is driven by the love to talk and the fear to listen. It is jargon on crack.

Premature presentation syndrome is typified by ready, fire, and then aim. Shoot and ask questions later. You are simply unleashing the product hammer and as Abraham Maslow stated so eloquently, “If you only have a hammer, you tend to see everything [problem] as a nail.”

Salespeople operate under the quaint notion that it is their God-given right to sell their features and benefits. Since it states in the Sales Constitution that all products are not created equal, it is your solemn right and salesman duty to show prospects the correct way to the Promised Land. However, no one has the corner on absolute truth.

If it was all this easy and it really was all about our product’s capabilities and market leadership, we would all be retired now because the product would speak for itself and sell itself. Actually, we would all be out of a job and a profession if it were all about the product. If it were, they certainly would not need most salespeople.

The following is an illustration of how the value proposition plays out and puts you at a severe disadvantage:

Imagine you’re meeting a prospect for the first time. After a little chitchat, this potential customer asks you to describe what you do, what you sell, what makes you different. “Why should I buy from you?” they ask.

More than likely, you would include the following: quality, service, reliability, expertise, and value/performance.

Now let’s imagine that you just landed a plum job with your biggest and strongest competitor, gaining a better compensation package and three weeks of vacation instead of two. To add icing to the cake, you have your former territory.

Excited to prove yourself to your new employer, you return to your old contacts, including the one from the example above. Your former client congratulates you on your new position, and then queries you about the new company and its capabilities. Again, this former client asks, “What makes you different and why should I buy from you?”

This time, the prospect may prompt you by asking, “You know, one of the things we really appreciated and valued about your former employer was its quality—do you have good quality?” Your response: “You bet, it’s one of the reasons I moved over to ABC Co.” The prospect might then ask, “What about service?” You stress the company’s wide commitment to service and pull out the mission statement to drive your point home. And being a professional, you continue producing all the latest industry reports that highly rate your company’s reliability, expertise, value, and star performance.

In all your excitement to create this unique value proposition, what you’ve really done is to commoditize it. You’ve recited, chapter and verse, the exact value proposition your competitors tout. Of course, you have left the prospect with one differentiator: the same differentiator by which they will now measure all your competitors: You guessed it—price.

In today’s marketplace, the feature and benefit sales methodology that so many companies use to differentiate themselves actually makes them look and sound like everyone else, completely marginalizing their value proposition. The sales reps all sing from the same hymnbook and they all reduce themselves unwittingly to the lowest common denominator. What a lot of sales reps don’t realize, however, is that many customers work very hard to set reps up to sell this way.

Illustrating this point, I once gave a presentation at a company where a buyer attending the meeting pulled me aside and proceeded to explain this exact strategy and how it benefited him by getting all the suppliers to believe they weren’t different at all. As soon as the reps were convinced they were basically interchangeable, he noted, they would all reduce their pricing.

The irony is all companies, big or small, sophisticated or unworldly, in all industries, covering all products and all services, intangibles or tangibles, sell the same way. They sanitize and whitewash their offering by using common standards, open architecture specifications that multiple vendors can easily meet. In the end, it becomes a wash. The very thing that feature and benefit selling tries to protect against, it reinforces. Their self-indulgent presentations reflect mostly minimum standards and lowest common denominators for being considered or just staying in business. It is truly a zero-sum game. Companies are just grounding down one another to a lackluster sameness.

In respect to your features and benefits, there is ample anecdotal research that prospects perceive differences between competing products and services to be considerably less measurable and important than salespeople think it is. On an average sales call, a salesperson touts 6 to 8 features and the average prospect can only remember one product feature and frequently that was inaccurately recalled.

That correlates well with industry accepted research that says the success of a salesperson is based only on 10% product and technical expertise, 15% on selling skills, 25% on relationship and people skills, and 50% on beliefs and attitude (goals, motivation, and beliefs about sales).

In addition, neurolinguistic programming (NLP) research states that your message to an individual whom you are trying to persuade and convince will evaluate you by:

• 7% — the words we use
• 55% — nonverbal message: the way we look when we say it
• 38% — vocal: how we say it

93% of communication is nonverbal. Imagine what that means in relationship to your features and benefits and your value proposition. With your mouth shut, barring any information spewing, you have a 93% chance to communicate. When it is open wide, you only have 7% chance to communicate.

Although trite, the following truisms really debunk the time-honored product dump:

• Seek to understand before being understood
• Prospects hate to be sold, but love to buy
• It certainly begs the question, “Do you want to sell or have someone buy?”
• Prospects don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care
• Seek to be interested before being interesting
• Prospects don’t remember what you said, but how you made them feel and what they emotionally experienced. They don’t care about facts or figures, but feelings and emotions. They buy intuitively and justify their decision logically and intellectually
• No one resists his or her own ideas. The best ideas people ever heard were the ones that they thought of themselves
• Prospects are people, not companies. Features and benefit selling’s fatal flaw is it predominantly positions itself as if it were selling to companies
• Prospects buy what they want, not what they need. And in many cases, they are not even aware of what they want. We are trying to sell prospects something before we establish why they want it and what is at stake

A recent study by the National Association of Manufacturers found that there is a superfluous 30% added value on products that are valueless. Vendors are supplying products and services that customers do not want, need, or recognize. Our hype and over-reliance on featuring our products’ attributes cause this. We use our products as a stick to try to beat people into submission. The harder you attack and hold onto your products’ features and benefits, the harder you hold onto the belief that it is universally right for everyone. It is a vicious cycle.

The irony is that prospects will do everything possible to have you sell your features and benefits, outline your solutions, have you ask as few questions as possible to learn more about them, and make premature recommendations, when the exact opposite is what they desperately need and want. Be aware that they will deny you an authentic, professional approach because of fear and apprehension of full disclosure. That is why you get blank stares and restlessness from prospects after you have expertly showed them how you can help them, and you ultimately walk away with nothing to show for your efforts. There is an old fable that captures this concept well: the mythical story of Samson slaying 10,000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Salespeople are doing the same thing daily by killing sales opportunities with the same weapon. When prospects ask if you can help them, inquire about what makes you better, ask for a proposal, request your pricing… what they really are asking and what they really care about is, “Do you understand me?”

Value based (features and benefit) selling does not work as well today because prospects are more savvy and sophisticated. They have less time to be influenced with all your information (especially as you move up the food chain), they are held more accountable in their purchasing decisions, and the information you have can be ascertained and accessed through alternative channels.

In the knowledge based economy, the value of a salesperson is judged not on what they know about their product but on what they can learn about their prospects’ problems and critical success factors. Unlike in the Dark Ages, leading with your product information and solutions now is looked upon with suspicion.

In the Internet era, sales organizations can no longer get away with placing pathetic faith and stock in their products and solutions. We eulogize and romanticize our products and service offerings as if they were the end all, the real thing. We can no longer afford to treat prospects as Pavlovian dogs that are shaped by only one stimulus—our features and benefits. All products and services are intrinsically valueless. We need to put more faith and value into our prospect’s problems, their corresponding consequences, and learning the intricacies of their business so we can build a business case that supports change or recognizes that change is not feasible.

By playing the role of a product pitchman and being a talking brochure, we end up simply parroting what our competition is doing: advancing our position negligibly. By being exactly like all the other competitors, we naively participate in the parade of venders who are like the lemmings, blindly and without question, marching to the sea to their inevitable demise.

Like professional boxers, you cannot just be equal to the incumbent to be a challenger; you must be demonstrably better. Too often, salespeople are forcing their will and agenda on prospects before they have firmly established if their prospect has a compelling and driving reason to change. You cannot sell value until your prospect has voiced what value looks like to them.

Prospects do not buy in a vacuum where there are no other variables or priorities to consider, yet salespeople conduct themselves as if they did. Roughly 60% of all sales are lost to a “no buy” or “no change”. Selling your value proposition does not account for the prospects who do not buy from anyone. Salespeople waste untold amounts of time and credibility establishing product superiority with a prospect who has not firmly decided they are truly committed to changing. They are trying to close someone Moses or the Prophet Mohammed could not close.

To exacerbate the problem, most salespeople operate under the belief that their prospects have a very evolved understanding and have deep insight into their problems and are fully capable of making rational, informed, and quality decisions. Unfortunately, most prospects and salespeople do not have the time, inclination, or expertise to fully diagnose and prioritize their business problems. “There is clearly a performance oversupply in the marketplace that outstrips the comprehension and needs of prospects. We see this with our more technical customers where close to 80% of the prospects do not understand their needs or their priorities. Frequently, their problems are more complex than salespeople are treating them as,” says Jeff Thull.

Feature and benefit selling works moderately well with prospects who know exactly what they want and works well in slow-moving, more price sensitive and commodity oriented businesses where being an advisor is not valued. “If you are strictly product focused, you will ultimately be a commodity. If you are obsessed with your competition, you will always be product driven,” says Skip Miller. Feature and benefit selling also has modest success with prospects who buy from you solely for the intrinsic attributes of your product. We call these intrinsic value buyers. They only buy your product for what it can accomplish and perform for them.

“Unfortunately, these are the type of prospects who are price shoppers, not loyal, and who maintain a very hardened and inflexible procurement-like attitude. Feature and benefit selling works extraordinarily poorly with extrinsic value buyers. They are more concerned with all the extrinsic or external elements beyond your product offering. They are more concerned with your advice and counsel and they will pay a premium for your integration capabilities,” says Jeff Thull.

Feature and benefit selling is a static and fixed method of selling that does not translate well into the realities of how prospects really buy, which is experientially and emotionally. It also wastes a lot of time and credibility because it does not fit well into the 80/20 rule… 80% of buying decisions will be focused on only 20% of the product’s benefits. Ultimately, salespeople end up doing dog-and-pony shows, pulling out all the stops on their floor show, getting out all their pots and pans and their bells and whistles and getting on their soapbox to do their premature presentation. This premature presentation syndrome has the salesperson always beaming with excitement, but prematurely climaxing with their information and ultimately leaving everyone (prospect and salesperson) unsatisfied and unfulfilled.

In relation to feature and benefit selling, familiarity not only breeds contempt, but defensive prospects. They put up their guards. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “What you do shouts so loudly in my ears, I can’t hear a word you are saying.” Too often salespeople are a dogmatic mouthpiece of run-of-the-mill standard fare, stressing the same-old same-old. Salespeople unwittingly relegate themselves to being the master-of-the-obvious. Their selling position is simply a triumph of the lowest common denominator. When all their distinctions (features and benefits) without a demonstrable difference cancel out, vendors are reduced to a pure commodity play. Products become interchangeable and easily substituted and readily replaced. Your products can now be easily matched, point-by-point, by your competition. Salespeople believe their products’ value proposition is their lifeline, but it really is a hangman’s rope.

Salespeople using value based selling end up being very promiscuous sellers by giving away, for free, all their valuable ideas and solutions, resulting in free consulting, unfair product comparisons, and collusion with the competition by sharing clever ideas that prospects invariably bring to your competitors to replicate… better, faster, and cheaper. We treat our features and benefits as the Holy Grail. Unfortunately, prospects do not pay homage respectfully, canceling out the similarities and devaluing the differences.

Like attracts like. Since we do not judiciously protect our information, prospects like-mindedly do not respect and treat our information as valuable. Loose lips not only sink ships, but they sink sales orders. We sell our products vigorously and then we buy them back. It is not unlike quicksand. The more we struggle and work to sell our products, the more we sink deeper into a giant black hole. How can we expect prospects to have an open mind when we feed them all our dogma? Without demonstrating and initiating a balanced approach, prospects will not feel obligated to treat us as equals.

Not only have salespeople commoditized their company’s value proposition, they also have commoditized themselves. They look and sound like everyone else, yet wonder why it is so difficult for them to get new accounts, to get high-level meetings, and to have customers respect their time.

Because we are in the information economy, customers are savvier and better informed. They now have direct access to the traditional information they once obtained and valued from salespeople.

“To counter this scenario, companies feverishly bring out new products, add new bells and whistles, and become certified by the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) or Six Sigma, only to be eclipsed or copied within a few months, a few weeks, a few days, or even a few hours. So from where the buyer sits, all salespeople and products look frighteningly similar,” says Christine Gould.

So long as we rely on our hollow dog-and-pony shows, we will be set up to be shot down like ducks in a row. As with certain diseases, the stronger the medicine we use to fight it, the more resistant the disease becomes. Feature and benefit selling by itself is the disease of which it is purported to be the cure. Prospects are resistant to your value pitch. The law of unintended consequences fits perfectly for feature and benefit selling. We are reduced to column fodder where prospects spreadsheet us and devalue our offering.

Feature and benefits selling is marginalized because we do not know what we are selling until we know what our prospects are buying, why they are buying, how they are buying, and when they are buying. Without these benchmarks being established, instead of getting active listening from our prospects, we get active annoyance. They are annoyed because being a product expert does not mean we are customer experts. When we recite volumes of technical information about our products, we are demonstrating we understand our own products, not our customer’s business. We are essentially cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Imagine going to an orthopedic surgeon complaining about knee pain and after 5 minutes, he recommends surgery or he gets out all his product information on the latest surgical techniques and starts telling you in intimate detail ad nauseum about how he will apply all these nifty new techniques to make you even better than when you came in. How would you feel if this happened to you? Now imagine you go to surgeon #2. After an initial one-hour consultation, with careful review of X-rays and lots of questions, he also recommends surgery. Who would you feel most comfortable with?

As you can pointedly see, all prospects are futures traders. They buy future expectations. No one buys the product for itself. We all buy it for what it can bring, but most salespeople are so in love with their offering, they are too busy to find out what the prospect is trying to accomplish and then help them navigate and define their options with a balanced assessment of the pros and cons.

The reason sales can appear to be so challenging and difficult is because we carry this heavy burden of proof around. The more we think we must sell our products’ features and benefits, the less we will sell. It is a cruel joke of the universe. Ironically, the reason we do not change is because we would feel so guilty at how easy it is by not selling—it would grate against our Puritan work ethic. We would feel so cheated and shortchanged by patiently sitting back, listening, observing, questioning, and letting the prospect proactively do all the selling as to why or why not they would be open to changing. What would you do if you no longer had to be in charge? We take the path of most resistance because we feel in control, we hate to listen, we are self-absorbed, and we love to convince and persuade, even when it is not necessary.

As soon as salespeople conclude that they have nothing inherently special or unique to sell, that is when they will truly differentiate themselves from the competition and not have to rely on a flawed style of selling: features and benefits selling. We should no longer treat our product as if it were the means to an end. Our product and its attributes are simply a vehicle to help us build trust and respect by learning about our prospect’s business. We should look at our products or services as an empty container. This container is inherently without value and it remains neutral until we start to fill it up with compelling and demonstrable proof and evidence as to why someone would want to change or buy. Today’s salespeople can no longer be like Willie Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, who is out there gripping and grinning and telling and selling unsubstantiated and prejudiced features and benefits. Value based selling is fatally flawed because it fails to sufficiently address the two most important issues on any prospect’s mind — “my personal agenda and my company’s needs.”

Other articles you might like:

• Persistence… The Final Myth: Just Say No
• The Way You Buy is a Leading Indicator for the Way You’ll Sell
• The New Hire — Doing It Right
• The Telephone — Sales Tool or Club
• The Loneliest Job in the World

Salespeople are often faced with unresolved deals in their pipeline that they normally give up on or persist beyond any reasonable hope. There is a middle ground that is appropriate when you have reached the point of no return, your prospect is stringing you along in that they are taking you down the primrose path, and is not returning your repeated phone calls or emails.

The strategy is called close the file. It is used as a last ditch effort to get closure. The idea is to save you and your prospect any further hassles and time by dragging matters beyond a tolerable and reasonable time frame. To effectively execute this strategy, you will need to be nurturing, respectful and it is helpful to take full responsibility for your current situation.

Closing the file is liberating because activity that lacks closure can be very emotionally debilitating for salespeople. There is a lot of freedom in taking the position of “yes” or “no”, but no long drawn out think-it-overs.

Closing the file is an empowering and liberating sales strategy. The idea is to email or leave a voice mail with a prospect who is no longer responding to you. Closing the file allows you to see if the prospect has any further interest. If you don’t hear back from them shortly, you will assume they have no further interest and you will graciously close the file and move on.

Prospects respect salespeople who respect their own time. It is important that you let your prospects know that you respect their decision to not get back to you, but on the same hand you can no longer follow up with them any longer and you will cease your efforts. The most demeaning and debilitating aspect of sales is not receiving closure of your deals. A “yes” is great. A “no” is acceptable. However, any stall or long drawn out think-it-overs is a total time and resource killer.

Most salespeople avoid “no” at all costs. They don’t know that their job isn’t to sell or just receive affirmative responses. Their job is to help people to make decisions. Once you adopt this non-selling posture or change agent attitude, you take the pressure off your prospects and yourself. However, you are going to have to learn to let go. This is hard for salespeople. As long as you believe that a good salesperson never quits, you will continue to have full pipelines of prospects who have a genuine, sincere interest in your product, but a passive and casual interest to act upon it. Good salespeople know where they can sell and when to quit. There are always two winners in a sales transaction. The first is the one who was awarded the contract. The second is the one who lost early, easily and effortlessly.

Closing the file allows you to preserve your self-dignity by receiving closure and gaining respect from prospects because you are willing to walk away.

Here are the key points and principles to be aware of and utilize when formulating your emails and voice mails when closing the file:

• Tonality should be neutral, non-enthusiastic, warm and considerate
• If they are really interested they will not let you leave
• The more you make “no” available to your prospects, the easier it is for them not to have to use it: You essentially take the pressure off them
• By honoring their position and allowing them to come to their own conclusions, independent of your own agenda and influence, you build a future platform of trust and respect
• Take 100% responsibility for the lack of responsiveness of your prospects. Either you railroaded them into agreeing to be interested when they weren’t or you were never on the right track to be privy to their priorities and their corresponding competing initiatives

A word of caution: don’t have unrealistic expectations of prospects flocking to their computers or phones to return your call or email. Typically by the time you place the close the file message, your chances of revival have typically diminished tremendously. A return message of 10%-20% is average and can be expected in most industries.

The following are examples that you can snail mail, email, fax or leave as a voice mail:

• “I’ve exhausted my repertoire of follow-up options. I sense that any more contact attempts on my part will be a nuisance to you, if it hasn’t already. So, I don’t want to waste any more of your time and patience. Could you give me the courtesy of leaving a message on my voice mail or email me as to what the status is? Thank you for your attention and consideration. If I don’t hear back from you I’ll assume you have no further interest and I’ll respectfully close your file. If you are still interested, I can be reached at 888-888-8888.”
• “I’ve been trying to reach you to no avail. I am afraid I’ve put us both in a position that we don’t want to be in and I may be wasting your time. Since I haven’t heard from you, I sense this is not going to move any further. Is it done and shall I close the file… or have things been hectic and you haven’t had the chance to get back to me? If that is the case, give me a call and we can talk further. In all fairness to you and to respect your time, if I don’t hear from you I am going to assume it is over, that you want me to close the file, that you’ve lost interest or you don’t have the time or inclination to pursue this any further. Thanks for your professional courtesy. P.S.: If it would be easier, just put a check here ____ to close the file and email this back to me or call me at 888-888-8888.”
• “I’ve been trying to reach you for the past couple of weeks to no avail. I can safely assume you are busy and juggling many priorities. I know you are under no obligation to get back to me, but if you could send me an email as to where you stand on our proposal, I’d very much appreciate it. If I don’t hear back from you I’ll assume it is a dead issue and I’ll take you off my active call list. Thank you for the courtesy.”
• “You have asked me to do some work on your behalf and I have followed through on that request. I have left you numerous messages to provide you with that information and I would be greatly indebted to you for the courtesy of a return call. If I don’t hear back, I will assume it is a dead issue and I will close your file. Thanks.”
• “I want to hold up my end of the bargain by following up with you in good faith one last time. When we last met I believe I may have cornered you into agreeing to move forward, without giving you the option to do otherwise. I have been in the business long enough to know that when someone hasn’t returned phone calls it is for a good reason. Could you extend me the professional courtesy as to where you stand? That way I can respect your time. If you are no longer interested, please give me a call to that effect. If I don’t hear back from you by next week I’ll graciously close your file.“
• “If my sincere efforts are hopeless and non-productive or better spent elsewhere would you let me know? Otherwise, if I don’t hear back from you, I’ll assume you are still interested and you want to be followed up with in earnest and with diligence.”
• “I throw myself on your mercy. You were so gracious to originally agree to get back to me as to your interest in attending our sales conference. Could you grant clemency this one time and call me or return this email? Your action will absolve you of any further nuisance on my part. Our upcoming briefing will be centered around companies who are experiencing, to some degree, problems in the following areas:

• Reduced margins
• Longer selling cycles
• Decreased ease of differentiating themselves from their competition
• Shrinking market
• Lower sales volume
• Increased cost of sales
• Heightened competition
• Rampant discounting
• “If these areas hold marginal concern for you, then it won’t be necessary for you to attend. If I don’t hear from you I’ll assume that your sales situation is more than satisfactory and I’ll close the file and take your name off my prospect list. Thanks again for your consideration.”

Choices:

• No, I have no further interest. Please close the file.
• Yes, I’d like to attend your sales conference. See attached invite.
• “I have been unable to reach you after following up with you in good faith. Please let me know what, if any, the next steps are:
  • Yes, I want to move forward.
  • I’ve been too busy. Please be patient. Continue to follow up.
  • I am not sure. I need more information to specifically address my sales problems.
  • No, thank you for your interest and please close the file and don’t follow up anymore.

“Thank you for your consideration. Please email back your response at your earliest convenience, or call me at 888-888-8888.”

• “I’m not so naive not to recognize a client’s agenda, priorities and time constraints shuffles. So, if there is no further interest, please grant me clemency and call me at 888-888-8888 to update me as to your status? That way I won’t waste any more of your valuable time and patience. Thank you for your courtesy and consideration. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume you have no further interest and I’ll graciously close your file.”
• “I’m not in the habit of pestering clients. When we originally talked, you had a problem. Now I’m afraid you have a second problem, which is how to get rid of me. Can you please call or email me as to tell me where we stand? That would be much appreciated. Thanks for your professional courtesy. If I don’t hear back from you by next week, I’ll assume it is a dead issue and I’ll graciously close your file. “

The following is additional verbiage you can use to add or replace from the proceeding examples. Guilt and shame are a subtle pretext that is imbedded in these examples. However, don’t lay it on too thick or it will backfire:

• “I wanted to hold up my end of the bargain by contacting you one last time.”
• “I wanted to try to appeal to your sense of fair play and ask if you could give me closure, so that I don’t overextend my welcome here.”
• “In the spirit of fair play I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt and call you one last time.”
• “While it would be nice to do business with you, I’ll respect your decision either way.”
• “After many repeated attempts to reach you, you are still at large. So that I don’t become a stalker and risk being slapped with a 100-foot restraining order, I’m going to graciously close your file if I don’t hear back from you this week. Thanks again for your time and consideration.”
• “Any further calling on my part risks being a breach of professional conduct. If I don’t hear back from you this week, I’ll assume this is a dead deal and I’ll cease any further efforts to contact you. If by chance you are still interested, don’t hesitate to call me or email me. “

Closing the file and getting resolution is critical for you to preserve your dignity and to save your time. In sales it is crucial to realize that your job has more to do with getting people to make decisions and receiving resolution than it does in convincing and persuading. Therefore, you shouldn’t feel apprehensive in getting prospects to give you a negative response. Getting closure allows you to emotionally move on and not be tied down with a pipeline of deals that are united by false hope.

Getting closure is a great strategy to keep your head in the game. By forcing the issue to get decisions or to make decisions for your prospects, you’ll save yourself a lot of time and potential hassles. In sales there are always two winners; the one who was awarded the deal and the one who lost quickly, easily and with minimal expenditure of time, effort and resources.

Other articles you might like:

• Premature Presentation Syndrome: The Death of Feature and Benefit Selling
• Don’t Let HR Hire Salespeople
• 7 Ways to Build Stronger Teams
• The New Hire — Doing It Right
• Two Critical Tests for Sales Candidates (Part 2)

Unbeknownst to most salespeople is the idea that selling is all about getting prospects to make decisions, both small and large. Getting decisions that reach a conclusive “no” or “yes” and getting decisions that allow the prospects the freedom to decide “no,” without the fear of a salesperson’s full frontal counterattack. Therefore, selling isn’t as much about persuasion and convincing as it is about self-discovery.

What sets up most stalls, delays and endless think-it-over scenarios isn’t salespeople’s inability to close, but rather engaging prematurely prospects who aren’t in a favorable position to make a change. Salespeople’s misdirected desire to sell and provide solutions set themselves up to be used and have their time wasted by chasing phantom prospects.

To facilitate minimizing stalls, salespeople should take on a non-selling posture. This posture allows salespeople to be objective, impartial and allows their prospects to sell themselves as to whether it is in their best interest to change or not, regardless of the salesperson’s personal agenda.

To understand why stalls are so widely tolerated and dealt with so poorly by salespeople, we must first understand the personal beliefs that salespeople unwittingly bring to their profession. These beliefs must be acknowledged and understood before salespeople can hope to change their behavior and improve their ability to deal with indecisive prospects.

• Need For Approval

• Too many salespeople enter sales to be liked and to make friends. By having a high need for approval salespeople aren’t willing to ask the tough questions and call prospects on their stalling strategies. They avoid healthy confrontation because they put too much faith in the honesty of customers.

• Buy Cycle

• The way you buy is the way you’ll sell. If you diligently do your research before an important personal purchase, where you methodically take your time, patiently explore all your options, gather volumes of information, and wait until the last minute to commit, you will tend to be disproportionately vulnerable to prospects who buy the same way. Like attracts like. This protracted way of selling and buying will naturally attract prospects who will stall and delay. The travesty is salespeople who are like this will have an overly-developed sense of buyer empathy and will be vulnerable to long selling cycles and the corresponding frustrations that come with it. If you aren’t a decisive decision maker yourself, how can you expect other people to be?

• Controlling Emotions

• Salespeople who effectively control their emotions are in the moment and listening intently to their prospect instead of planning, strategizing and worrying what their next move should be. Because they are in the moment they can better gauge whether a prospect has the means, the authority, and the desire for change. Stalls and think-it-overs are minimized by a process of elimination.

• Taking Personal Responsibility

• Salespeople who take personal responsibility tend to have shorter selling cycles because they don’t make excuses and put the blame on the prospect for not making a decision. They take ownership, that ultimately they are responsible for deciding who to pursue and who to let go of.

Salespeople who also have long selling cycles and are vulnerable to think-it-over selling situations consistently don’t manage these five key assets:

Time They squander their time on deals that they haven’t properly qualified. They aren’t aware that time kills all deals. They aren’t discriminatory as to who they’ll engage.

Information They don’t judiciously guard their information. They freely and loosely give out their information early on, not realizing that they are losing their leverage and being reduced to free consultants

Resources They allow valuable company resources to be deployed without getting anything in return.

Relationships They act like goodwill ambassadors, indiscriminately building relationships with prospects who can’t make decisions or don’t have the influence to buy.

Self-esteem They set themselves up for failure by putting themselves in selling situations where they have a high likelihood of not succeeding without any regard as to how it will ultimately affect their confidence and long-term performance.

By squandering these five assets, they lose control and leverage and easily fall victim to prospects who mislead them, stall them, and abuse them.

The following tactics for stalls and put offs require a non-selling posture. These strategies are based more on getting your prospect to make a decision one way or another instead of forcing their hand and railroading them to agree to do something that eventually won’t stick. These questions require finesse and a nurturing posture since they can be perceived as assertive in nature.

By honoring your prospect’s independence to make decisions free of your agenda, you are making it easy for them to express the naked truth about their situation. You’ll notice that many of the following examples of how to handle wishy-washy customers actually invite and welcome “no” as a viable choice. Going for “no” requires a salesperson to balance their desire to make a sale with the potential reality of dealing with an uncommitted prospect. This strategy can be used for closing deals or closing out deals, following up on appointments, locking down demos, presentations, or seminars, handling overly extended “think-it-overs,” getting final approval from a decision maker or incessant requests for future call backs.

Since on average 70% of your sales efforts go to naught, than it makes sense to be just as good at closing deals as you are at closing out of deals. So much time is spent chasing losing causes. It is always very advantageous to get “no’s” early and effortlessly without squandering undue time and effort. If you are discriminatory with whom you spend time with, under what circumstances, for how long and at what cost to your organization, you’ll be able to maximize your assets. Also, by enhancing and perfecting your own personal buying habits to ones of low need for approval, short decisive buying cycle, emotional detachment and taking personal responsibility, you’ll attract like-minded prospects who will be less inclined to use stalls and put-offs.

Generally, salespeople are reluctant to ask tough questions that put their offering at risk, and to get their prospect to share bad news. But, if you really want to be an advocate for your prospect, you need to give them every chance to disqualify themselves. Don’t worry, that doesn’t mean you instantly roll over. However, when you and your prospect don’t waste each other’s time, everyone comes out a winner.

The following questions strategically invite prospects to meet one half-way. Since these questions are “masters of the obvious”, you need to present them in a nurturing way. Any way you can uses stories and metaphors to emotionally engage your prospects, the better. It helps them connect with the spirit of the message.

Generally, when your prospect wants to think things over, the only one who is thinking things over is the salesperson. The key is to empower your prospect to see the truth and reality of their situation. As long as you are engaging your prospect with thought-provoking questions and the prospect is answering them, you are getting closer to a resolution one way or another. By playing devil’s advocate, you aren’t afraid of putting a price on your prospect’s procrastination. These questions are designed to flush out and contest the empty words and promises that prospects commonly dish out when you are getting stalled on a final decision.

The following are examples of handling stalls and delays:

• “In the past when you’ve been forced into an awkward position where you’ve had to delay and postpone something, historically, do these matters revive themselves, or is it one of those things that if you haven’t done it by now it will never happen?”
• “I’m willing to go the extra distance, invest my time and resources and follow this through if you are. But if you have too many irons in the fire and if you are ambivalent, then maybe we should drop it.”
• “Mr. Prospect, I firmly believe when my prospect and I don’t waste one another’s time, everyone wins. Am I wasting your time here?”
• “Usually I find if it has dragged on this far it is the kiss of death. I don’t want to be a killjoy, but I sense we’ve lost momentum on putting this deal to bed. What do you think?”
• “The road to hell is paved with great intentions. In relationship to this problem is it possible your grasp exceeds your reach?”
• “We are in a perpetual holding pattern. Any way we can fast track this? These deals tend to take on a life of their own. The longer they stretch out the more likely they are to go south. Time kills all deals. And I’m afraid it’s going to kill this one if it keeps stretching out.”
• “Time is never the real issue. The real issue is you may believe it isn’t worth the time. Our actions frequently speak louder than our words. And based on your actions, so far it may not be worth your time. So, should the both of us spend any more time here?”
• “If you were me, would you continue to chase you if your time was really being stretched and you only had time to follow up with only 1 or 2 customers a week?”
• “Can you level with me? You strike me as a straight shooter. We are facing the law of diminishing returns here. How realistic and viable is it that we’ll do business together in a time frame we both can live with?”
• “Do you see any downside in delaying making a decision on this?”
• “I get the sense I’m cramming a square peg into a round hole here.”
• “I think we are at an impasse. We are smack in dead man’s land. You aren’t against the proposal but you certainly aren’t wholeheartedly for it or embracing it either. That is the kiss of death in my business.”
• “Let’s pretend you didn’t have that as an excuse or a reason. Would you still move forward?”
• “You know if you put a frog into hot water, it will immediately jump out? But put it into cold water, and slowly turn up the temperature, the frog keeps adapting to increasing temperature until it adapts itself to death. I’m sensing our delay on this proposal is facing a similar fate.”
• “It seems like the trail has gone cold here. Is that a fair assumption?”
• “Is this proposal a real hail mary and a shot in the dark or is the timing still on the money?”
• “You definitely have one leg in the icebox and one leg in the oven. What can we do to make it one way or another?”
• “I’m afraid if it hasn’t happened by now, it never will. From your perspective, is this reviving or is this deal DOA?”
• “Before we drag this out further, and have me call you again next week, can we have a come to Jesus meeting now to see if this is still a good fit for you?”
• “Do you owe it to yourself or your company to consider this deal any further?”
• “Before we both jump to even more commitments to further follow up, which we both might regret, can we take a minute and be sure we are in sync about your interest and commitment?”
• “Would it be foolhardy and overly ambitious to say you are totally committed at this stage?”
• “Is this worth you sticking your neck out any further and prioritizing this initiative?”
• “I know you weren’t planning to approve this until next month. Does it make sense to take the bull by the horns and resolve this now?”
• “What do we have to do to get you to make a decision on this one way or another so we can put this proposal to rest?”
• “I believe we have reached an impasse because of the classic saying, the devil you know is always better than the devil you don’t know. It is always far easier to delay with something you know and have grown accustomed to no matter how bad it is than to risk the unknown regardless of the potential.”
• “Is your interest active or inactive?”
• “I know even if a prospect may choose to delay or be forced to delay, deep down they don’t like to procrastinate. The best thing to do is try to make a decision while everything is fresh in your mind. If you don’t, as each day passes, you’ll be less likely to make a decision. If I let you delay, I would be negligent in my job and do you a disservice. I’m too much of a professional to do that because I want to do what’s right for you. That’s why I’d like you to make a decision now, yes or no.”
• “Let’s recap why you originally chose to meet with us and consider us a possible partner, and find out whether or not it still makes sense for us to move forward. This way we can get some resolution on this matter one way or another.”
• “I’m getting mixed signals. I hear you loud and clear that you are still interested, but your lack of action speaks volumes. Am I to believe your words or your actions?”
• “Let’s draw a line in the sand, a drop-dead date. If nothing changes by that date, we’ll consider it a dead issue.”
• “The million dollar question is, does your interest have any more traction?”
• “How uncomfortable would you be if I asked you to make a decision today while the irons are hot?”
• “What part of you wants to go forward and what part of you wants to cut your losses?”
• “It sounds like you still have a healthy dose of skepticism.”
• “On a scale of 1 to 10, how confident are you that you are going to move forward with us? I’d like nothing more than doing business with you. And I’ve enjoyed our business relationship. However, I have a problem that has nothing to do with you. But I do need your help. I need to get a final resolution from you.”
• “Even Congress doesn’t take this long to make a decision.”
• “Is there anything we can do to entice you before you cool your heels? Waiting out the worst and hoping for the best isn’t always the best strategy.”
• “I get the idea from your actions that your interest is fading and fleeting as we speak.”
• “Is your interest conditional and up in the air, or is it a slam dunk and a no brainer?”
• “Usually when I give someone a proposal they really are in love with it or they have some questions or concerns. Which fits for you? It sounds like a “no.” If it isn’t a “no” and you don’t have any questions of concerns, then it must be…”
• “Usually when someone says they haven’t gotten to it, what they somewhat mean is that they really aren’t interested, but are uncomfortable telling me that.”
• “I can’t convince you that you need this. If you really needed training, my guess is you would have already done something about this on your own. So we have to decide if this is worth going out on a limb to execute. You probably are wrestling with ‘don’t fix it if it isn’t really broke‘. Or, don’t rock the boat on something that you can afford to hedge your bets on.”
• “What can we do to make this more than an idle, arbitrary curiosity? Otherwise, it will be easy for you to take the path of least resistance here.”
• “You’ve been sitting on our proposal for a while. Does it make sense for us to think about sitting down again and wrapping up the details?”
• “What, if anything, can we do to upgrade and prioritize this deal so it isn’t just one of those 2^nd tier wish list projects? And if this isn’t possible, do you have the stamina to continue down this path?”
• “I’m surprised you haven’t made a decision on this. You strike me as a take-charge decisive person.”
• “You aren’t going to have me believe you are going to be indecisive and draw this decision out, are you?”
• “Let me play devil’s advocate. You probably haven’t made a decision on this for a good reason. Is that reason at all related to this no longer being a priority for you? Then what is it?”
• “I get the sense that you are dangerously getting to that point that you can easily write this off as an idea past its prime.”
• “I’m doing some forecasting on this account with corporate. They want me to find out from you realistically as to where you stand, for better or for worse. So where do you stand?”
• “I’m afraid that the longer we draw this out the more these problems get factored into the cost of doing business and are looked upon as something that just comes with the territory and nothing will change because of that.”
• “Has this fallen off your radar screen?”
• “Have I grossly overestimated your interest and commitment and if I have, may I apologize?”
• “As I see it, I have two choices here. I can be real patient and persistent, or we can jointly decide now one way or another as to whether we proceed. Which do you prefer?”
• “Sometimes clients lack resolve, commitment and conviction to move forward. In principle, they are sold, but in respect to practicality, it is too inconvenient and not high enough on their radar screen to take action.”
• “Does it disappoint you or surprise you that you haven’t made a decision on this as of yet?”
• “When you’ve had something in the past that was important to make a decision about, what was your sense of urgency? What’s different now?”
• “I must, like you, spend my time very judiciously and productively. Please don’t spare my feelings by telling me what you think I want to hear.”
• “Is it just me or is something bothering you about moving forward?”
• “What can we do to pull the trigger or pull the plug?”
• “The biggest challenge I face is customers have a genuine and sincere interest to change, but for a variety of reasons have a passive, casual and idle interest to do anything about it. Does this describe your quandary?”
• “I get the sense that there is a little part of you that says if it hasn’t happened by now, it unfortunately will never happen.”
• “Is this something you have to think long and hard about or is this pretty straightforward?”
• “Are you afraid haste will make waste?”
• “What I want to try to avoid is going through the motions of making a decision two months from now that could have just as easily been done two months earlier.”
• “Are there any advantages from your perspective to doing this sooner rather than later?”
• “Is this a problem that has run its course? You seem not to be under the gun to fix it. Do you now have bigger fish to fry?”
• “Have we reached a point of diminishing returns here?”
• “You strike me as a take charge-person, the kind who takes the bull by its horns. Can we make a decision today?”
• “You aren’t 100% sold on moving forward, are you?”
• “From your perspective, what would you have to gain or to lose by not moving ahead with this?”
• “So that I can follow up with you in the most professional manner and not be a stereotypical salesperson who is going to waste your time and be a pest, is your interest passive and casual or is it genuine and actionable?”
• “If you were a betting man, would you say this deal is getting ready to close or implode?”
• “I get the sense we’ve been in a holding pattern on this proposal because I’m pushing you to do something that isn’t in your best interests or the timing isn’t optimal for you.”
• “You are dangerously in that grey zone where you are getting just enough to be comfortable but you aren’t getting enough to be very content. Are you willing to back up your intentions with action?”
• “Let’s say you had to make a decision today. If I put a gun to my head and told you which will it be, yea or nay, what would your answer be?”
• “What exactly did you want to think over?”
• “What are you going to think about? What more do you need? Then it sounds like you’ve made up your mind.”
• Prospect says, “I want to think it over.” You pause, “Now that you’ve thought it over…”
• “I get the sense that this isn’t a priority for you any longer.”
• “You won’t hurt us it if is a ‘no’. We have plenty of business. Where it will have an ill effect on us and where you’d really be doing us a favor is if it really is a ‘no’ and we are the last to know.”
• “If your schedule hasn’t permitted you to commit to taking 10 minutes to review this with your boss, then what does that tell you about your problem?”
• “You are between a rock and a hard place. At this stage which is more important: the problem at hand and the fact that it is costing you $1 million a year, or the problem of finding time to decide on this?”
• “It sounds like you are in a position to make a commitment only under ideal and optimal conditions and since you don’t have that luxury now, should we pursue this any more with you?”
• “I want to apologize. We are at a standstill here. I might have grossly misjudged your intentions. Here I’m trying to get closure and you aren’t even sure if you are really interested anymore. Where do we stand?”
• “When something is relatively unimportant and not a high priority for you, how do you usually dispense with it? Is that any different from our situation?”
• “My guess is that we will continue to have this conversation until the pain of change is less than the pain of the status quo. You can afford to drag your feet on this because for the time being, you have a high threshold for your problem based on your other priorities.”
• “My experience tells me that people rarely want more of what they already have in abundance. Since business is very good for you now, I could see where you don’t have a compelling reason to act now.”
• “I’m not so naïve as to recognize that a satisfied need is rarely a motivation. If for example, you go to your favorite French restaurant and have a wonderful 4-course meal, and you are totally full and satisfied and they bring you your favorite soufflé dessert, you will turn them down because you are full and satisfied. I get the sense you are in a similar situation.”
• “You have not yet overcome or reconciled the ‘twin evil forces’ of change, which are time and habit. You are in the classic dead man’s zone. You are getting just enough to make it worthwhile but not enough to really get what you want. I believe that is why we are at an impasse or standstill on this proposal.”
• “It sounds like you are overextended, overcommitted and stretched too thin. So does it make sense for me to commit my time to follow up with you?”
• “Can I tell you what one of my biggest problems is and maybe you can help me out? Usually when someone says they want to think it over it is because they are either a) really not interested but are uncomfortable telling me so, or b) aren’t convinced that what I have is right for them and still have some unanswered questions, or c) they are a think-it-over type of person and they are 100% committed, but they need to sleep on it. Which fits for you?”
• “Sounds like you want to commit, but you aren’t sure what you are committing to.”
• “Based on my many years in the business, can I tell you what has happened many times in the past? It might not be relevant here. When I call you back in 10 days and your secretary tells you that I am on the line, that is when you’ll make a decision. If this is the case, can w possibly accelerate this process?”
• “Are you willing to go out on a limb, grab the bull by the horns and expedite this?”
• “I am afraid the longer I drag this out with you, that it will become a problem past its prime.”
• “I always feel a little awkward and embarrassed to ask this, but I feel I must ask in all fairness to you. One of my greatest fears is that I railroaded you into agreeing to consider us without giving you the chance to do otherwise. Did I force your hand in this?”
• “Let me throw caution to the wind and possibly shoot myself in the foot. I know your time is very precious but if you truly believed in your gut that we could help you, you would have already made a decision. And the fact that you haven’t tells me that maybe this decision is possibly past its prime.”
• “I get the sense your interest is chilling and is possibly going into a deep freeze. Is this a cold lead now?”
• “Wouldn’t it be safe to characterize your interest as no longer being hot to trot?”
• “I think we’ve hit a brick wall. So that I can adjust my follow-up with you appropriately, how timely or untimely is this for you?”
• “Just so we both understand one another. This isn’t my hobby, although I love it and can’t think of doing anything else. This is how I clothe, feed, and support my family. So it is critical I respect your time as much as mine. If you aren’t convinced this is right for you, I would greatly appreciate you telling me so. That way I won’t waste either of our precious time.”
• “On your to-do list, where does this fit? My intention isn’t to push, but we’ve met quite a few times and I have followed up with you diligently many times. It seems we aren’t getting any closer to getting a resolution. Can I ask, is there a decision on this in our future?”
• “I know you want to think it over some and get all your ducks in a row, and I think you should. I don’t want to take that away from you. Sometimes I can help my prospects by asking them some questions that will lead them to realize that this isn’t a good decision, or to firm up and strengthen their conviction that this is the right decision. Let’s take a few moments to review the pros and cons of moving forward and maybe it can help us get a decision.”
• “We have potentially a classic conflict of interest here. You have problems but don’t have the time to give them top priority. Unfortunately, the status quo usually prevails in these cases. Unless you are the exception to the rule, your delay fondly reminds me of my bachelor days when I had leftover food in my refrigerator and it wasn’t bad enough to throw out but it wasn’t appealing enough to eat. And I finally took action when my fiancée threatened to throw me out. I get the sense you are facing a similar quandary.”

Hope springs eternal in the peddler’s heart. Ask questions that get the truth, instead of just getting a glimmer of hope. Don’t be afraid to ask questions that could render your “sales cause” hopeless. Salespeople tend to equate the absence of a concrete “no” response to the possibility of a vague “yes”. Don’t be deluded into thinking that if you don’t bring up something negative, they won’t bring it up on their own or won’t think about it. And, if they aren’t willing to make a decision and you think you are at a point of no return, don’t hesitate to force the issue and accept the inevitable “no”. This strategy clearly has its risks, yet so does the long drawn-out patient route that obviously leads nowhere.

Your strategy to accept “no” will be dependent on the health of your sales pipeline, your emotional investment in the deal, and your current level of patience.

Other articles you might like:

• Terms of Engagement… To Get Trust You Must First Extend It
• Salespeople: Are They Their Own Worst Enemy?
• The New Hire — Doing It Right
• The Telephone — Sales Tool or Club
• Conquering the Fear of Closing

Relationship selling is the bedrock for successful selling in the new millennium. However, most salespeople conduct themselves as if they were in a quaint Norman Rockwell painting, building relationships on a smile and a firm handshake, on friendship, on shared mutual interests, common background, charisma, personality and frequency of contact. This quaint, traditional and old school way of thinking is archaic and grossly ineffective.

Not enough sales organizations are questioning if this style of relationship selling works anymore. Prospects simply don’t have the time, inclination, the patience or the freedom from accountability to create surface-level relationships anymore.

Did you ever meet a great glad-handing salesperson from the 70s and 80s? They had a winning and magnetic personality, a can-do personality, they were always upbeat and optimistic and they built friendly relationships instead of sincere business relationships. A psychologist would more than likely define their sales approach as self-absorbed, egocentric, narcissistic and center of the universe. The irony is that salespeople increasingly complain that their prospects are the same way. No wonder prospects sometimes act that way. Salespeople are so self-absorbed they don’t let their prospects get their own needs met.

A recent movie, “Good Company“, perfectly typifies this type of personality seller. In one scene a rising star sales manager admonishes an aging and soon to be irrelevant Dennis Quaid about salespeople being dinosaurs if they don’t change their skill sets. Dennis Quaid responds by saying that can’t be all that bad since they ruled for millions of years. And the tragedy is, he’s somewhat right. A personality seller can survive in certain sales situations and certainly in commodity sales, where being likeable will carry the day. Unfortunately, these positions are becoming more and more scarce in the global information economy where that type of salesperson brings little value to prospects. Sales managers are constantly reminded of this sales strategy when they are doing a pipeline review of their salesperson’s prospects and the #1 criteria for a positive forecast is “they like me”.

People buy from people they like… period, end of story, used to be the old selling adage. Today it has shifted to people buy from people they like, but more importantly, people buy from people they believe understand their business, their problems, their initiatives and their priorities.

Personality sellers too often get caught in the vanity trap. They put too much emphasis on their own charm and persuasiveness. The focus is on them, not their prospect. And what do we know about prospects and who they rightfully only care about? You guessed it… themselves. Salespeople need to leave their magnetic charm in the reception room. Sellers who rely solely on their personality are limited to sell to others with similar personality traits and interests. True relationship sellers can connect to anyone because of the universal appeal of always putting the emphasis and focus on the other person. Personality sellers generally glorify themselves and their solutions and lack empathy and flexibility. They also seek to control the prospect. Relationship sellers let the prospect feel they are in control by empowering them to make informed and educated decisions independent of the salesperson’s own agenda. They honor the prospect. Unwittingly, what personality sellers work so hard to prevent, they actually create. They are ultimately perceived as impersonal and uncaring and their strategy to appeal to prospects to like them is quickly becoming obsolete and irrelevant.

Too often salespeople are so intent on people liking them, they end up building meaningless long-term relationships with prospects who are at the wrong level, don’t have authority and can’t make “yes” decisions. Their need for approval and to get people to like them supersedes their desire to make a sale. What they don’t realize is that one comes to harmony and connection with others not through approval or a need to please, but through authenticity. You build respect and long-term relationships when you have the courage to speak the truth and not sugarcoat everything. Prospects ultimately buy from you because they respect you. Personality sellers end up being the best player in a game that is no longer being played.

Leo Durocher once said “Nice guys finish last.” In sales, it can be a real problem if one is aggressively friendly. Forsake being the most accommodating, most agreeable and the friendliest. Salespeople too often overcompensate being the most courteous person around, hoping that their goodwill and charm will carry the day. But unfortunately it isn’t real and isn’t a true representation of who they really are. Prospects see through the façade. An effective relationship seller is authentic and knows that one must first honor and respect oneself before others do. If everyone you encounter in your sales position likes you, you are doing something wrong.

Don’t fall in love with your prospect, fall in love with the process of learning their business and helping them understand their priorities and initiatives. You know you are too relationship-oriented to a fault when you are unwilling to let go of unqualified prospects with whom you have a great relationship. One question you should always be asking yourself is, if I invest in this relationship what will be my potential return? By the way, your prospects are constantly asking themselves the same question.

Many personality sellers claim they are relationship sellers when in fact they are just professional visitors, goodwill ambassadors and glorified order takers who bring no business substance to the relationship. They go only where they are welcomed and well received, eventually socializing on company time and dime.

Companies are now waking up to the fact that there is a deficit of true relationship sellers in the marketplace to recruit and hire. They are slowly coming to the realization that “the natural,” who they sought out and hired in the past, can no longer bring the necessary prerequisite skills to successful selling in this demanding and challenging new marketplace. Too many sellers in the marketplace today are simply empty suits.

Relationship selling is a manner of building a business relationship on thought- provoking and incisive questions where the prospect formulates a belief and an understanding that you have the best solution without you even telling them what that solution is. Relationship selling is all about trust, confidence and understanding, and since so many products have reached quality parity you can no longer create trust like you could in the past with your product or service offering. You aren’t selling features and benefits, your value or your superior product or service. You are really selling the advantage of doing business with you. Prospects are really buying your advice, counsel and expertise in their industry and understanding of their business and their problems. In true relationship selling, people don’t buy from companies but from individuals. Trust shifts from product and company to the people who are selling.

Ironically, prospects will buy inferior products and service from salespeople they trust more often than they will buy superior products and services from salespeople they don’t trust. Prospects don’t have the time, patience or inclination to be an expert in every purchase they make. They rely on salespeople to demonstrate their expertise through their understanding of the prospect’s business.

Because of a universal parity in products and services, the only remaining differentiation companies can rely on is their ability to engage their prospects in a unique fashion. Thus, trust is the #1 relationship skill in business. The first step in building a successful business relationship is through curiosity and rapt attention, which, by the way, is the highest and most sustainable form of flattery.

Trust is earned in listening, not talking. Your ability to lead your prospects to re-examine their business, through objective and non-prejudicial questions, earns you the right to be a trusted advisor. It’s the journey that builds the relationship, not the end result. What you do from discovery to the close is what will determine the quality of your relationship. The sale is only the means to an end. The end is really the relationship you build and the opportunities it affords you in the future. Unfortunately, most salespeople, even with the best of intentions, are perceived as putting the sale first because of their egocentric approach.

Building a relationship on trust is easier said than done. For a lot of salespeople it doesn’t come naturally. They may be likeable and friendly and knowledgeable but they might not have the innate ability to build trust and confidence with prospects who don’t know them or who are guarded and defensive.

To build trust you must first extend it. You must be willing to make an initial gesture of goodwill and good faith with the goal that the prospect will return it in kind. To effectively extend trust you need to put your self-interest aside and take a non-selling posture. For example, “I’m not sure if we can help you specifically or if what we have for you is a good fit. If it’s okay with you, I’d like to ask some questions to learn about your business. Feel free to ask me some questions about our business and applications and at the end of our meeting, let’s decide if we have a good fit. And if we don’t, feel free to tell me and I’ll graciously get out of your way.” The preceding helps to put your prospect at ease and builds mutual trust by showing your willingness to be vulnerable and not in control. Ironically, the way to gain control is to cede control. You also build trust by giving your prospect the freedom and the independence to make decisions independent of your selling agenda. Too often salespeople violate trust by jumping the gun, moving too fast and not honoring their prospect’s freedom to self-discover their own solution and their own answers.

Learning your prospect’s business allows you to create value. However, you don’t create value with your product or services. Creating value and building a strong relationship requires you to be neutral and take a non-selling posture. Actual information is lost when we lose objectivity by emotionally responding (positively or negatively) about what we are hearing. By being in the moment we honor and empower our prospects. As difficult as it may sound, we need to be empty of expectations. Building long-term relationships comes from first serving and then selling. Most salespeople mistakenly first sell and then try to serve and build trust through their deliverables. So often, they never get to the trust and serve part because the trust wasn’t established initially.

Business relationship sellers are more concerned that people respect them and view them as a business resource as opposed to having someone like them. They ask tough questions, they are willing to walk away from relationships that no longer are mutually profitable. They take time to build relationships within an organization so they are never left high and dry when the inevitable day comes when their “inside guy” leaves. They also know when to have serious relationships and casual ones and they are always open to making adjustments. They are willing to be selective and discriminating to maximize their time and their returns. When it comes time to upsell existing relationships, they treat their customers as first-time prospects. They don’t have preconceived assumptions, they don’t take their relationships for granted and they patiently and methodically reestablish understanding of their prospects’ new needs and objectives.

Effective relationship sellers seek to build relationships to get annuity business instead of short-term transactional business. Transactional selling is very expensive and raises your cost of sales. Relationship sellers always have their focus on long-term customer retention and development. Taking a long-term perspective, they are willing to make an investment in the relationship instead of just getting a quick hit or one night stand. Sustainable relationships happen when both parties view one another as equals. It is always more fulfilling and fruitful to establish relationships with prospects whom you trust and respect than with someone you don’t respect, or you place too much emphasis solely on them and place them on a high pedestal.

Relationship selling, unlike personality selling, will ultimately be more fulfilling, will be more profitable long-term and will minimize sales burnout. By creating enriching experiences and connections through knowledge-based questions you will learn which relationships to pursue and which relationships to deemphasize.

Other articles you might like:

• The Prospect’s Buying Manifesto: The Great Shakedown
• Stop Talking to PWOTs
• You Have to Undo Lack of Trust Before You Can Build Trust
• Measuring Up to Success
• Leadership is a Two Way Street

Not every salesperson has a natural gift to quickly bond and develop rapport with prospects. Many try to succeed by ingratiating themselves with frequent contact, entertaining prospects, being responsive, reliable and helpful. However, what if you don’t have the luxury of the preceding and you are faced with a reluctant and guarded prospect who resists your sincere efforts?

To effectively manage and build genuine business relationships, you can no longer rely heavily on just personal connections. I have many clients who have salespeople who are perfectly delightful, engaging and likeable people, whom clients really like, and who don’t buy from them. Then I have clients who have salespeople who are a little rough around the edges, socially awkward and only moderately engaging who are top performers in their respective industries. What is the difference?

The difference is that people buy from people they like but what is more critical is that people buy from people they believe understand their problems and can build rapport based on their ability to identify and isolate critical success factors, independent of their own sales agenda. They also have the expertise and patience to allow the prospect to discover their own issues, helping them navigate their own outcomes, priorities and conclusions.

But, in order for prospects to be comfortable enough to share and explore their deeply rooted emotionally charged problems, the salesperson will have to create a non-threatening and safe environment. This skill set is critical in today’s market because relationships are so much more challenging to establish because of time restrictions, perceived commoditization of products and stricter rules of accountability.

We will explore here the strategies to differentiate yourself and build a business relationship built on trust, confidence and shared vision. The strategies are called OK/Not OK. To employ this non-intuitive and unconventional relationship building strategy, you will have to take your sales cap off and step into the realm of non-selling. To effectively execute this non-selling posture, you will have to make available to your prospect the opportunity and the freedom of choice of saying “no” to you. By making “no” an acceptable answer and conclusion, you will have to have the confidence and internal fortitude not to be emotionally invested in making the sale. The combination of reverse psychology and playing the role of a change agent who is objective, neutral, unbiased and taking on the posture of a third party observer at the selling event are important elements of executing the strategy of OK/Not OK.

Noted psychologist Dr. Eric Berne pioneered OK/Not OK. The power of this strategy of developing strong relationships between people is often underestimated and misunderstood. In layman’s terms the theory states that the way in which you make someone else feel OK about themselves is by personally down-playing your own position, so you will come across as less OK. This elevates the prospect’s own self-worth, therefore making them more comfortable with you. This is one of the most difficult concepts for salespeople to accept, or at least experiment with. The reason it is difficult to grasp and imagine for most salespeople is because it threatens the core and the traditional idea of their reason for being. This theory debunks and usurps the classic definition of a successful salesperson: very confident, always being positive and enthusiastic, never accepting defeat, cheerful, diehard persistence, chatty and always projecting a winning personality.

To underscore the pervasiveness of how OK/Not OK plays out in our society, we need not look any further than our media. Our entire media culture thrives and prospers on this theory and manipulates it to enhance its audience. Why was society as a whole riveted with curiosity and suspense for many years with O.J.’s, Martha’s, and Britney’s fall from grace and personal problems? Very simply, as tough as our own lives may appear and as difficult our struggles are, for a scarce moment, we felt better about our own circumstances in relation to the rapid fall of the celebrities who allegedly had everything. What subconsciously goes through our minds is, “I thought I had it bad, this guy has it a lot worse.” For a moment our life’s problems pale in comparison and we see future hope. The examples abound in daytime television and our fascination with reality TV.

Because most sales interactions have friction and conflict inherently built into its process, most buyers are constantly feeling pressure and having their positions being invalidated and diminished by perceived classical manipulative tactics employed by salespeople. When a prospect feels inadequate, what goes through their mind subconsciously is, “I think I need to feel better than you so I can neutralize my own inadequacies.” So they look for a salesperson whom they can demonstrate their will with, and for a moment feel more OK about themselves. Therefore, anything you do to reverse the expectation and anticipation of this negative stereotype will serve you well and enhance your position as an understanding, genuine and inquisitive salesperson. Moreover, by appealing to this positive reinforcement that many buyers crave and find lacking, you will enhance your stature by making your prospect feel more comfortable in sharing valuable information with you that they may, under normal circumstances, hold back.

Salespeople unfortunately enter most sales transactions with the heavy burden of being guilty until proven otherwise, unlike in a court of law. In sales, there is no Geneva Convention for salespeople. Since they utilize traditional sales strategies that put most of the emphasis on themselves, their company and their offering, they usually invite a lot of skepticism and resistance early on in the sales transaction. To exacerbate these heavy burdens for both parties, salespeople and prospects alike bring to the table and add to the mix their own unique version of insecurities, fears and general lack of positive self-esteem. You can start to see where this can potentially get ugly and become a clusterfest. The theory of OK/Not OK tries to level the playing field by having the salesperson take the first step by offering a gesture of goodwill that will hopefully begin to lighten the load that the prospect invariably brings to every sales transaction.

Prospects need a scapegoat. We as salespeople temporarily offer ourselves up to help them feel better about themselves. It is basic human nature, and prospects are no different, especially when they have to deal with people/salespeople they don’t initially always trust. They have a strong unconscious need to find someone they can make into a scapegoat so as to alleviate the burden of their own inadequacies or “Not OK-ness”. This is a universal psychological truth that can be a huge advantage for salespeople to employ to break through the burden and barriers of building relationships with initially leery and doubting prospects.

Prospects generally resist change whey they feel they are being controlled or manipulated. For many prospects, the only way they can initially get their needs (OKness) met is by controlling the way they interact and respond to salespeople. So grant them the privilege of control by coming across as less OK and comfortable so that they can feel more OK and more in control.

Going back to Dr. Berne’s original premise, the way you make someone comfortable and OK is you personally come across as being less OK or not as comfortable. This concept is so ingrained in our society that it is why many of us still love going to the movies. Remember when you were a kid and you went to the movies with your friends? Why did you love to see Batman and Spiderman movies and cheer at the end of the movie when the villain was defeated? Because for a brief moment, you realized that as tough as it was being a little tyke, you did not have it as bad as the villain and at that moment, your own burden had been temporarily lifted.

Prospects appreciate when salespeople don’t try to control them, when they honor them by treating them with dignity and respect and don’t try to forcefully make decisions for them. By giving up control, salespeople can take the high road instead of the muddy road of co-dependence in which they foolishly try in vain to control the prospect.

Salespeople unwittingly compromise their position and make prospects feel invalidated and threatened (Not OK) when they do the following:

• Make premature assumptions of being able to help a prospect who hasn’t shared whether they even want the help.
• Offer declarations of superior product performance and applications before understanding the prospect’s specific needs.
• Use technical data and expertise to impress a prospect with your breadth of knowledge, when in reality you are invalidating and diminishing their knowledge.
• Salespeople, by making an affirmative outcome (yes) the only acceptable answer that they will take, force the hand of the prospect to mislead them and stall them because of their guilt in rejecting salespeople.
• Spend 80% of their time talking and not listening, which sends the implied message that “I am more important than you”.
• Jump the gun and finish the prospect’s sentences and thoughts.

By putting the professional needs and emotional needs of your prospects first, you enhance trust, build rapport, demonstrate empathy and create understanding. This is the basis of relationship building.

Here is a specific fictitious example of how struggling and employing OK/Not OK builds rapport and how it can give you a huge completive advantage:

Once upon a time, there was a product manager for a point of purchase company who was filling in for a salesperson who couldn’t make it to an industry trade show. This person was green and inexperienced. Since management was in a bind, they decided to throw him to the wolves and let him experience baptism by fire at the trade show. Whenever a customer came into the booth, this person would ask them a lot of questions since he really didn’t know anything. He would admit upfront that he was new and not technical, but he would be more than happy to help them as much as possible. By the end of the show, he closed five deals without knowing anything. So management in their infinite wisdom decided to promote him into sales and have him go to their own in-house intensive product training university. Since this person was so successful without any technical expertise, the rationale was, imagine how successful he would be with some expert product knowledge. In this month-long class, he learned everything there was to learn about their product line. Management was keen on letting loose this newly minted trained seller, so they let him be lead salesperson at the very next show two days after graduating from the product training university. So as soon as the first person came into the booth, this amateur turned pro was all over them with technical data, engineering plans and the latest supporting product research. By the end of the show, no sales were made by their superstar.

The moral of the story is the best way to be a professional is to learn to be an amateur again. The amateur, incorporating OK/Not OK, takes a non-threatening, non-selling posture by asking a lot of questions and assuming nothing.

OK/Not OK is a very useful strategy to honor your prospect and allow them the space to feel non-threatened and comfortable. Once prospects reach this comfortable place, they are far more likely to share their deep-rooted emotionally charged motivation as to why they want to consider changing. By asking objective non-biased questions, you not only help them discover their own answers, but you create a critical bond and trust that can facilitate a profitable business relationship.

The epitome of OK/Not OK and the archetypical example of someone who plays it to perfection is Peter Falk in the old classic TV show, Columbo. Detective Columbo incessantly made his suspects comfortable and OK by purposefully appearing a little less OK himself, coming across as a little disheveled, a tad confused. Arriving at the scene of the crime in his beater, he allowed his suspects to feel in control, optimistic, feel invulnerable enough so that they would drop their guard and incriminate themselves. He was truly the master of getting his suspects to do a Freudian slip by getting people relaxed, comfortable and appearing very non-threatening. If you have seen the reruns, one cannot forget the classic Columbo arriving at the crime scene, seeing the victim with a dagger in their heart lying on the ground, and within hearing distance of the suspect, asking the attending officer if that was the victim and commenting that it looked like he was stabbed to death. He leans toward the suspect and states, “I know you are very upset, this must be traumatic for you. We’ll do our best here.” And as he is leaving, turning to the suspect, who is feeling comfortable and in control, and asks a simple but clever question as the perp slowly starts to dig his grave.

Although Columbo is a homicide detective in the LAPD, which has a brash reputation, he is anything but this. He is not imposing at all. He is humble, approachable, susceptible, non-arrogant and makes all of his suspects feel invincible and totally OK. “There is something friendly, non-threatening and disarming about Columbo’s floundering approach,” says Charles Green. The Columbo of sales embodies Dr. Berne’s Theory of OK/Not OK and the idea that the meek shall inherit the earth. Anyone taking on the Columbo persona would have nothing to prove or defend, is OK in being subordinated, promises you nothing, makes no pretense of being able to fix all problems, openly shares their concerns from the prospect’s perspective, totally takes on a non-selling posture, challenges politely why the prospect wants to change and is always crediting the prospect for their good ideas.

The best characterization of Columbo is in a short chapter in the book The Advisor by Charles Green. It embodies perfectly the ideal salesperson:

“Their style is informal, flexible, casual and unrehearsed. Professional, but playful. Their gestures are non-threatening, quietly puzzled and appear confused when the suspect contradicts himself but never corrects them until he gets all the facts. They appear over-qualified and under-qualified at the same time. They appear overwhelmed with people who have a need to show their intelligence and superiority, neutralize expectations, quick to point out their limitations and influence, cede control right way, remain neutral and honor his suspect‘s alibi. They seem under-whelmed with the idea that they are a master detective. Their manner is very studiously understated. They use humanizing touches calculated to put their suspects at ease; ask to use the bathroom, request ashtrays for their stinky cigars and wear the anti-uniform to have their suspects feel superior.

“Consider the typical client and what their perspective is. They are intimidated by your expertise, which far exceeds their own. They’re uncomfortable sharing problems that are causing great pains. There are many things at risk, higher costs or benefits and things to be lost and gained. They don’t want to appear stupid by asking inane questions. And there are the trappings of the meeting that cause more insecurities: these people look successful, we can’t afford this, or, they are very impressive, I’m not sure if we can learn it as well as them.

“Columbo‘s genius is in getting people to drop their guard and their inhibitions. The biggest barrier to capitalize on Columbo’s wisdom is Pogo’s dicta: ‘We have found the enemy and it is us.’ It is our inability to be the professional equivalent of being beige, background music.”

A way to always keep your prospect psychologically OK is to learn to not be special. The problem with being special in sales is you can only be special if someone else isn’t. That someone is normally the prospect, who in turn demands to be special. We spend our whole lives trying to be special (OK) and when we meet with prospects, we experience a clash of determined wills as to who will win the prize of being most special. It is human nature to make ourselves special (OK) by making others feel less special (Not OK). In sales, it is imperative that we temper our need for recognition, validation, to truly be heard and listened to so that it doesn’t compete and overshadow the need to serve our prospect’s exact same needs. We project an air of self-importance and arrogance when we don’t listen, talk too much, make assumptions, come across overly enthusiastic about our offerings, don’t appear humble or put the prospect’s needs after our own. Often by being right, we inevitably prove our prospects wrong. Prospects love to rebel and resist authority. When we don’t come across as the ultimate authority, nothing to prove, no pressure to act and nothing to lose, prospects tend to drop their guard and open up. As Leonardo da Vinci stated, “Those who truly know, have no reason to shout.”

Being “Not OK” and taking on a non-selling posture is the end of our hard-won Bigness (OKness), but actually it is also the end of smallness. We are simply transitioning from ‘me’ to ‘you’. Most salespeople struggle with this, because doing it differently than what they are used to would negate all their ego’s hard-earned accomplishments. It would unravel their status. It would call into question their goals and they would simply feel cheated. However, if they could only come to terms with that which they work so hard in achieving, being trustworthy, believable, and authoritative, being easy to get along with, they would see they achieve the exact opposite effect. Salespeople get in this vicious cycle where they make their prospects feel wronged (Not OK) by the salesperson being right (OK). And the prospect corrects the slight by making the salesperson wrong, because they are ultimately in control and want to feel right (OK). They ultimately do this in code by saying, “send me a proposal; send me some information; call me next week.”

Salespeople sabotage their position by putting themselves on a pedestal and being the center of attention. They would be better received by making themselves vulnerable and susceptible. By expressing their imperfections and discomforts, it only humanizes them in areas that are typically viewed as dehumanizing. Moreover, by being defenseless, we learn to absorb some of the inevitable slights and inequities that come up in sales. It is human nature that if a prospect goes after us and attacks us, we defend ourselves and counter-attack. When we are defenseless, we go with the flow, we listen, ask questions, let them win, let them vent, be empathetic and patiently wait for a possible opening, or by going Not OK by saying, “We probably aren’t a good fit for you”.

Our need to display our superiority (OK) is aptly shown in the following story from The Heart of the Enlightened, edited by Anthony De Mello:

Once upon a time, there was an inn called the Silver Star. The innkeeper was unable to make ends meet even though he did his very best to draw customers by making the inn comfortable, the service cordial, and prices reasonable. So in despair he consulted a sage.

After listening to his tale of woe, the sage said, “It is very simple. You must change the name of your inn.”

“Impossible!” said the innkeeper. “It has been the Silver Star for generations and is well known all over the country.”

“No,” said the sage firmly. “You must now call it the Five Bells and have a row of six bells hanging in the entrance.”

“Six Bells? But that’s absurd! What would that do?”

“Give it a try and see,” said the sage with a smile.

Well, the innkeeper gave it a try. And this is what he saw. Every traveler who passed by the inn walked in to point out the mistake, each one believing that no else had noticed it. Once inside, they were impressed by the cordiality of the service and stayed on to refresh themselves, thereby providing the innkeeper with the fortune that he had been seeking in vain for so long. There are few things the ego delights in more than correcting other people’s mistakes.

David Sandler said, “Sales is a Broadway play, played by a psychiatrist.” In sales, you are like an actor in a play. You put on the mask of your character (salesperson) and you play out your role. You ask questions like you have thought of them for the first time. You act surprised when a prospect describes a problem that you have heard at least a thousand times. And as a psychologist, you touch your prospects in a unique way by taking them through an emotional journey of self-discovery where they re-experience their pains. We are like a traveling psychologist. We want to get our prospects talking enough that they will eventually do a Freudian slip, where they self-reveal their true motivations which may or may not support our selling proposition.

OK/Not OK is about trying to get your prospect to change their ego state to a less demanding posture. All clashes of personalities or personal conflict emanate from “I’m OK” and “you aren’t OK”. Prospects who take an attack posture feel personally deprived. By not evening the score, the salesperson temporarily makes the prospect feel better about themselves and thus they are generally inclined to be more open. Any form of flexing one’s muscles is simply a coping measure or a defense mechanism driven by insecurity.

Salespeople constantly have to massage the ego of their prospects to keep them at bay. It is important for a salesperson to be aware that prospects who harbor feelings of superiority use it as a mask to hide their own deep feelings of inferiority. And of course the same holds true for salespeople.

The more you surrender your own sense of self-importance, the more important and special your prospects will feel about themselves. Salespeople can avoid many problems in sales when they remove themselves from the center stage. You can only feel special in relation to others who you consider less special. So in sales, having an overly defined concept of self will entice you to exert your will and your identity. This becomes a problem when your prospect shares the same desire.

When our egos are in charge of a sales call, trust and rapport are difficult to establish. Salespeople should be the first to yield and provide concessions or a gesture of goodwill. Something as simple as, “I can see why you may not be interested,” will go a long way in getting prospects to come down from their perch.

The Tao philosophy is similar to the strategies of OK/Not OK. The Tao says if you want to level the playing field, let the other person be strong and have the sense they are winning. So when they sound like they are interested, withhold your zeal, when they sound uninterested, withhold your pressure. Only when you attempt to meet people where they are can you try to get them to drop their defenses and consider changing. The way you gain control in the sales process is to be the first to give it up.

OK/Not OK requires you to take a posture of realizing you are never responsible for the negative feelings of your prospects. It is very liberating because you don’t have to respond to their negativity and take it personally. OK/Not OK is a great way to break down the barriers of mistrust.

Since salespeople are a target rich category, because they can be perceived as sitting ducks by insecure prospects, they need to always be working hard to keep their prospects feeling Ok. Salespeople with a healthy dose of self-esteem realize that power and control is so often a weakness disguised as strength. The real wit tries to make others feel a little more superior (not too much) and the halfwit makes others feel small.

OK/Not OK theory is reinforced by I Ching Chinese philosophy. Those who are a little weaker attract the stronger and in the process become strong themselves. The natural order of balance is achieved.

Other articles you might like:

• The New Hire — Doing It Right
• The Telephone — Sales Tool or Club
• Conquering the Fear of Closing
• Terms of Engagement… To Get Trust You Must First Extend It
• Deal or No Deal: Minimize “Definite Maybes”

Price

Price is never the real issue for prospects. The real issue is that they may not believe you are worth the price. The reality is that many times your product and service isn’t worth the price. Not because it doesn’t justify itself, but because your prospect doesn’t value it. So instead of constantly fighting price, focus your time positioning your product with prospects who are aligned with you price point or your value proposition.

Let’s first take a look at the most important contribution as to why salespeople get caught up in the price game themselves. Salespeople are their own worst enemy. Without question, salespeople pin themselves into a corner with their hard-won attitudes, beliefs, and personal buying habits that don’t support them selling value.

Personal Buying Habits

The way you buy is the way you’ll sell. If you are a price shopper, you will disproportionately attract price shoppers. Birds of a feather flock together, like attracts like. The best way to change your own selling habits is by modifying your own buying habits. Performance value shoppers tend to attract higher-end buyers. By becoming a quality value shopper you will begin to naturally assume a different selling posture that will draw like-minded prospects.

Selling Habits and Buying Habits

The following are leading contributors that will virtually guarantee price resistance:

Feature and Benefit Selling: This archaic, antiquated and still popular method of selling will quickly commoditize your value proposition and marginalize your selling position. The irony of feature and benefit selling is what it works so hard to prevent it actually creates. In the absence of the perception of value, every negotiation will degenerate to price.

Lack of Finding Pain: The more pain a prospect has, the more they are willing to pay to get rid of their pain. Salespeople who sell from the position of gain, advantage, and opportunity will consistently attract price resistance. The more you are creating pain, the less the prospect is concerned with price. When they are too busy negotiating an answer to their problem or understanding their problem, prospects aren’t as predisposed to spend a lot of time negotiating on price.

Selling Price: 80% of salespeople use price as a competitive weapon. Prospects rate price on a scale of 1 to 10 as a 2.5 and salespeople rate it as 8.0. Most salespeople aren’t aware that the opening price gambits by prospects are always just a ploy. 95% of all purchase decisions are made on a non-price basis. On most surveys, price is generally the fourth or fifth consideration.

Lack of Self Esteem and Confidence: It really isn’t so much believing in your product, as it is believing in yourself. Self-esteem and belief in your product or service generally go in tandem.

Needs based Selling: People don’t buy what they need, they buy what they want. Needs based selling (understanding their specifications, applications, and requirements) marginalizes and commoditizes your offering because people rarely pay a premium for what they need. They always will pay a premium for what they want. This is a classic Chevrolet versus BMW motivation. Most of us need a car (Chevrolet) but want a BMW.

Lack of a Healthy Pipeline: Salespeople who sell out of desperation generally have a poor pipeline of prospects. Consistent prospecting can help you arm yourself to be more effective in price battles.

Need for Approval: Salespeople with a high need for approval will tend to find themselves vulnerable to price shoppers. Their need to be liked, validated or to avoid healthy confrontation will generally supersede their need to sell healthy margins.

Selling at the Wrong Level: The higher up the food chain you sell, the less likely price will be a dominant factor. Most senior level people, unlike purchasing agents, don’t have the time or the inclination to do comparison shopping, because their mandate is more about growth, vision and profit.

The following are specific tactics, scripts, and verbiage to deal with price shoppers:

• “I understand price is an important factor for you, and it should be. As you can imagine, we offer a full range of prices, dependent on many variables. At this stage, I’m not sure what is right for you. Can we first establish what you need and why you need it? Then I’ll be more than happy to give you the price right down to the penny.”
• “You say you can’t afford it. I certainly can appreciate that. This isn’t right for everyone. What, if anything, will you accept as proof that you can afford it?”
• “My product is one of the more premium services around… is that a reason for us to stop talking?”
• “The good news is, I can help you solve your problem. The bad news is, it will cost more than you anticipated.”
• “When you say our price is high, is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
• “When you say it is high, specifically what did you mean by that?”
• “You must have found a comparable product with high quality and service for less.”
• “You would like me to reduce my fee by 20%; what part of our service are you willing to have left out?”
• “I’m going to ask you a tough question, and I hope you can appreciate why I’m asking this: Are you the least expensive company in town?”
• “Our customers basically fall into three categories. There are those fortunate few who elect to invest $300,00 on a long-term project. Then there are those who invest $200,000 for a medium-sized project; and then, those who invest $50,000 for a kickoff engagement to test the waters. Which best fits you?”
• “Let me ask you a silly question. What if it were free? Then price isn’t the real issue.”
• “The common law of business prohibits paying a little and getting a lot.”
• “Good things are seldom cheap. And cheap things are seldom good.”
• “We are a little less than a lot and more than a little, is how our customers would typify us.”
• “Are you concerned with price or total cost?”
• “Could you ever see yourself paying more for something you could get for less?”
• “Sometimes our product is expensive and it is a good deal, and sometimes it is expensive and it isn’t a good deal. Let’s see which is the case for you.”
• “Would it ever be of concern that you paid less on the front end and more on the back end?”
• “Is price your only concern?”
• “In order to give you a meaningful price, could I first ask you a couple of questions? Because at this stage, we aren’t worth any price.”
• “It is very expensive if it doesn’t work or if we aren’t a good fit for you. Let’s see if we are first a good fit.”
• “Everyone is in a tight mode. Is this going to break the bank for you?”
• “Your company doesn’t have deep pockets and short fingers, does it?”
• “If you can get it for less, then you should. You’d be fiscally irresponsible if you didn’t. If I were in your shoes, I’d do the same. However, the only way you could possibly get burned is if you were not comparing apples to apples. Are you open to discussing that?”
• “I know price is important to you. So we can compare all variables, do you mind sharing with me what you are comparing us with, in concluding our price is high?”
• “Mr. Prospect, how are you evaluated and what will you be remembered for two years from now? That you got a good low price on the front end or that the project was a big success because you didn’t cut any corners and you covered all your bases? A lower price just lowers your risk on price but not on quality.”
• “Let’s assume, all things being equal, even price, who are you most confident with at this stage?”
• “Are you concerned with price or cost? Price is the initial acquisition cost. Cost is the total ownership cost. It includes all the things after you’ve acquired the product. Are you open to discussing that to make a better comparison?”
• “I’m curious, how do you mean ‘it costs too much‘? Compared to what?”
• “Why do you feel you can’t pay this price? I’d like to understand if I can.”
• “If you think our prices are high, just wait until you see what it costs you when it is cheaper. Unless entry cost is your only concern?”
• “Let’s assume price wasn’t an issue for you. What else is holding you back?”
• “With all due respect, we are looking for customers who value getting more and therefore are willing to pay more, not people who can afford to pay less to get less.”
• “You can pay a little more now or potentially pay a lot more later.”
• “It’s not that you don’t have the money… it’s that you don’t believe it’s worth it. And we may not be. Are you open to exploring to see if it is worth it or not?”
• “Would you agree on a practical level a product or service is worth what it can do for you and not what you paid for it?”
• “We are expensive and it drives our competitors crazy.”
• “Why do you think anyone would pay more when they could get it for less?”
• “We aren’t a price house. We are never low bidders.”
• “The most expensive doctor in the world can be a cheap one.”
• “Do you think anyone has the money for this?”
• “When you say I’m expensive, is that a question or just an observation?”
• “If you leave it up to me, I have very expensive taste and I’ll recommend something that is very expensive. So can you share with me what you had in mind?”
• “Thank God our prices are high. And yet you are still talking with me. Why?”
• “Do you have any suspicions that easy money comes with a high price in this situation?”
• “When you say it is high, I’m assuming you will share with me if it is justified or not from your perspective?”
• “The price will be in direct proportion to how small or big your perceived problems are.”

Other articles you might like:

• Premature Presentation Syndrome: The Death of Feature and Benefit Selling
• Deal or No Deal: Minimize “Definite Maybes”
• The New Hire — Doing It Right
• The Telephone — Sales Tool or Club
• The Loneliest Job in the World

Salespeople consistently perform at a level equal to their belief in their self-worth and self-concept. Salespeople should work daily and diligently to preserve their dignity and self- worth so that they can be emboldened to do the tough tasks that are required of them. There are many elements that take a heavy toll on one’s self-concept in sales.

One of the most divisive is the need for approval. It is by far one of the most misunderstood characteristics of a salesperson. The prevailing wisdom is that salespeople need to be enthusiastic, eternally optimistic and courteous, accommodating, friendly at all costs, outgoing, have dogged persistence and have people like them. The problem is that most salespeople have taken this art form to an extreme. They are more concerned with people liking them than they are in getting them to respect them. They aren’t willing to jeopardize approval even at the cost of making a sale. They shy away from healthy confrontation, are afraid to ask tough questions and are reluctant to walk away from low probability deals. Subsequently, they are frequently used and treated as doormats.

To make matters even more complicated, prospects also feel unappreciated and are seeking their own form of approval. We now have prospects who feel unappreciated and salespeople who feel unappreciated and it becomes a great race to see who can get their needs met and their own sense of approval reinforced. No wonder sales can be a cluster fest. When we put our prospects on a pedestal and believe the customer is always right, this unfortunately reinforces our own insecurity and sense of inadequacy.

The very act of seeking approval from our prospects prevents us from recognizing it in ourselves. If you can’t give yourself approval, no one else will. The need for approval and the need for people to like us is a function of insecurity. Unfortunately salespeople have unrealistic expectations that aren’t in sync with reality, resulting in disappointment and unending frustration. Need for approval hampers self-expression. Self-expression is critical in sales because without it, it is difficult to enjoy yourself and be yourself, which ultimately takes pressure off all parties at the selling event. Seeking approval can be very addictive. The more you get the more you need and it makes you feel good while at the same time leaving you feeling bad. It is a bottomless pit and it promotes codependency.

The greatest confidence boost to one’s self-esteem is selling without attachment to expectations and outcomes. You take on the posture that you are independently wealthy and you don’t need the business. It is a very Zen-like position: nothing to gain, nothing to lose. Pursuing a prospect who is not qualified for your time and resources is akin to rejecting yourself. That is why if you are going to lose a deal, you want to ideally do it quickly and effortlessly. Letting go of poor prospects invariably makes you come away as being a mentally stronger salesperson.

If your satisfaction is dependent on certain results, then you are doomed to perpetual dissatisfaction. Whenever you want something so much that you make your satisfaction conditional upon receiving it, it is a sure sign that you are afraid to receive it. Keep in mind: if you were not afraid of it, it would be easy for you to receive it. One’s inadequacy actually exacerbates it and that intensity actually scares prospects away. They sense that you are desperate. They fear manipulation and they withdraw. Often we unconsciously scare away what we seek. We must conclude that either we don’t really want it or we are afraid to receive it. Both are probably true in most cases.

So don’t try to always seek control. Often, we end up being controlled by the control we seek in our sales role. There is no greater feeling and emotion that will strengthen your self-esteem than the freedom and liberation of “nothing to lose”.

Ironically, salespeople are forced to stay with poorly qualified prospects with low probability because they aren’t strong enough to lose. Frequently, they are also in denial because as soon as they get rid of all their poor prospects, what activity does that free them up to do that they despise? You guessed it: new business development. This avoidance activity forces salespeople into a vicious cycle of acting like a gerbil on a treadmill that aimlessly goes nowhere. Being needy isn’t an attractive quality to try to captivate and lure prospects with. We all experience this to some degree in our personal lives. Society looks at people who are needy as a sign of weakness.

When you expend all your energy and passion chasing phantom opportunities, you will have little left for when you pursue legitimate opportunities. When salespeople refuse to be taken advantage of, they naturally increase their own self-worth and self- esteem. Ultimately, confidence goes up and so does results. Keep in mind though; the real problem with your self-esteem is not really being taken advantage of by your prospects, as it is beating ourselves up because of it.

Lack of closure, resolution and getting people to make decisions is debilitating to one’s self-concept. Salespeople need to first become good decision makers themselves before they can expect to get others to be decisive. The longer it takes one personally to make decisions, the more likely they will attract like-minded prospects. Elongated “think it overs” and wishy-washy prospects should be avoided like the plague. Salespeople feel more in control of their destiny when they can get prospects to tell them where they stand, “yes” or “no”.

Another contributing factor that eats away at one’s self-esteem is when salespeople are constantly getting beaten up on price. Again, like attracts like, or, birds of a feather flock together. Salespeople who are skinflints and frugal will disproportionately attract price shoppers. Like anything in life, we unconsciously set ourselves up for failure because of our unconscious beliefs more so than the negative circumstances that we face. You can cure your problem of attracting price buyers only when you first decide to take personal responsibility for your own fate and not blame it on outside circumstances.

One can better manage their self-esteem and have greater control of the level of rejection they experience in selling by better coordinating their information. Salespeople set themselves up for failure by prematurely selling their products and services. Frequently, they are betting all their chips on losing hands. You can’t be rejected unless you have made an offer. Protect your self-concept by being judicious with your information as to when and under what circumstances you will release it. Also be aware that you will allow rejection to negatively impact you because it offers you some measure of security and sense of control.

Many salespeople are into the cult of positive thinking; however, so often what they think about doesn’t result in prosperity. This is an age-old problem. The reason is because, regardless of the surface level of positive thinking, we ultimately don’t understand and value our true self-worth. If you really knew your true worth and were in touch with it, you wouldn’t feel that something was missing. Arguably, positive thinking has surface benefits, but they are superficial.

You can’t make negative thoughts go away by focusing on positive thoughts. For example, think positive thoughts for a moment… now think negative thoughts… now positive… now negative. For the next 20 seconds, think of anything other than pink giraffes. The problem is, you have to think of pink giraffes in order to remember not to think about it. Wow, ironically the more you try to control your thoughts, the less control you have. Sometimes the more you focus on positive thoughts, the more energy and power you give to your negative thoughts. A positive mental attitude is best characterized by not being emotionally attached to an end result. You maintain positive thinking when you accept your circumstances without resisting them.

As author Paul Ferrini states:

“We want to control the flow of consciousness, but it cannot be done. We can discipline the mind, exercise it like a muscle, even get it to perform magic tricks, but we can never really control the content of consciousness. At best, we focus on certain things and repress others. But what is repressed does not go away. It is impossible to control the content of consciousness. It comes and it goes. You can’t know why it comes or why it goes. The idea that you can influence what comes up is magical thinking.”

An example of this would be cultural differences between Germans and Austrians. As the Second World War dragged on, the pervasive German attitude was: things are serious, but not hopeless. On the other hand, the Austrians where thinking the exact opposite: things are hopeless, but not serious. We compound our problems by giving them meaning. The act of being rejected only becomes a problem when we resist the rejection and try to change it and react to it. A positive mental attitude in the traditional sense tries to change your experience, and therefore compounds it.

“It’s all hocus-pocus. Stop chasing away negative thoughts and just be aware of them and accept them for what they are… random negative thoughts. All obsessions with scarcity thinking come from constantly reliving your past circumstances. If you didn’t mind having negative thoughts, you would no longer have them. It is your resistance and your chasing away of thoughts that make them so real and omnipresent. You guarantee their perpetuation,” says Paul Ferrini. Positive thinking is negative thinking all dressed up. You can’t force yourself to be positive and even if you do, it is just a surface projection and it’s superficial.

Negative thoughts that pass through your mind are just a mirror of preexisting negative feelings that must be brought into a conscious level before they go away. They never ever go away when you suppress them or deny them. Denial is weakness masquerading as strength.

The other problem with positive thinking, excessive enthusiasm and fake cheer is that it is not real or authentic. Prospects see through your veneer and you can sometimes come across as a phony, stereotypical, superficial salesperson. I don’t know about you, but when I see a really enthusiastic positive salesperson, I put my guard up. I question, why is he so enthusiastic? Am I going to get a fair deal here? I fear if he is so enthusiastic, it might be difficult to get rid of him if I am not interested, so I flex my will to cut him short.

Enthusiastic selling and excessive positive thinking dilutes your judgment and your ability to objectively assess whether you and your prospect have a basis for a mutually acceptable reason for doing business together. Emotional involvement clouds your thinking.

Too often, positive thinking is a fake sense of security because positive mental thinking does not have sustainable lasting power. We now have plenty of burned out enthusiastic salespeople that it has become an occupational hazard. The best way to be positive is to not be emotionally vested in the outcome. And the easiest way to remain internally enthusiastic and confident is by increasing your probability of success by reducing your risk of failure.

The irony about self-esteem is that you need to feel good enough about yourself to know that ultimately you are unimportant in the selling event. You must have a very positive self-concept to be humble and to put your prospect center stage, with your product and yourself off to the side. Not being center stage for a lot of salespeople can become a tough pill to swallow.

So much of our day-to-day actions, activity and conversations are to confirm and validate our self-esteem. However, prospects only care and are concerned rightfully for themselves. So we have to be strong enough to place them first and confirm and validate their needs before our own. The way you make someone feel more OK about themself is to personally come across a little less OK yourself. Peter Falk on Columbo was a master of this concept. The reason this is important is because questioning and listening skills require you to temporarily cede control and require you not to be self-absorbed. It becomes very apparent that salespeople must have a very healthy self-concept if they are going to be able to take on a posture of “not knowing”. The power of “not knowing” is a neutral position of looking at everything as new and fresh. Starting with a blank slate with every new client meeting, you are more curious and inquisitive. Also, you enhance your opportunity to be present and in the moment which always enhances rapport. By taking on a posture of “not knowing”, you are more flexible and fluid and you won’t be concerned as much about the outcome. It’s liberating for you and your prospect. Moreover, as soon as you believe you don’t know much, you are positioning yourself, ironically, to be learning a lot. When you don’t know and think you do, you can’t learn. This is worse than ignorance. Those who know everything know very little. In the beginners’ minds, (not knowing), there are infinite possibilities. In the expert posture you are reduced to very few.

Another enhancer to self-esteem is your goals. Only three percent of adults have written goals. The key to goals is to be focused on the journey, not just the final destination. Over-reliance on the destination can have a reverse effect on your self- esteem. In sales, it is critical to emphasize activity over results. You can control activity, you can’t control results. Have a plan of how many deals you want to make; how many people you want to talk to; how many appointments scheduled and attended; how many proposals submitted; and final orders received. By focusing on and monitoring activity, you will find yourself having days where you got poor end results as far as business, but you got lots of positive reinforcement from achieving the activity.

What can be even more powerful than goals is having a vision. A vision encompasses more than what you want to achieve but also how and why you want to achieve it. Generally, a strong vision will have greater traction and will be more sustainable than just having goals.

Self-esteem is critical in being able to constantly ascend the food chain of large accounts and higher-level executive contacts. Salespeople tend to associate with prospects whose self-esteem mirrors their own. The reason salespeople have reluctance to calling high in an organization or going out of their comfort zone and calling on marquis new accounts isn’t because of poor tactics, but because of internal confidence. It’s important to maintain your dignity and guard your self-esteem so there is a constant reservoir to draw upon.

Whatever isn’t working in your sales position, you must take 100% responsibility. Once you do this, you will quickly learn that all frustration is solely with the past. What others have done to you or are doing to you that causes you discontent, is only an external version of what you are doing to yourself. When you stop beating yourself up, you will find that others will stop beating you up. Simply put, you bring into your sales life what you allow to come in. The problem is, we don’t know what we really want or we don’t trust it.

“All your negative thoughts that you entertain are always putting the blame elsewhere. Since our self-worth only comes from the internal, blaming others is not taking personal responsibility. Our mind is the cause of everything it feels and thinks. Our mind therefore is the only thing we can legitimately blame. We have total power and control. We just don’t know it or are afraid of the consequences of that knowledge. What intimidates us is that our power and control is in our choice of what we think about, not in trying to change our circumstances,” says Paul Ferrini. As salespeople, we are constantly giving up our power. We make customers into scapegoats. We blame the economy or our company for our lack of performance.

The key is to admit your mistakes, take responsibility, but don’t be critical and be attached to the alleged corresponding negativity. The more you justify your failures, the more you hold on to them, the greater the likelihood you will project them onto your prospects and the greater the likelihood you will simply recycle them. Try to look at everything with utter neutrality.

“Experiencing your frustrations and rejections allows you to come to terms with them and ultimately release them. Denying and justifying your shortcomings with positive thinking without first truly emotionally experiencing them only represses them deeper to pop up at a later date. When you first see negative thoughts, don’t judge or resist them. When you start to increase your awareness of them, you find that they don’t have as much potency to run your life,” says Paul Ferrini.

Most salespeople find themselves under a spell that as soon as rejection and frustration enter their minds, an experience will quickly come to confirm and validate that negative thought. That is how powerful your mind is. When you truly accept the truth about yourself and take personal responsibility for everything that you think about, you soon find out that all the random thoughts that come and go through your mind don’t represent your true self. Your true self is peerless. You cannot put holes in it. It is bulletproof. You can only pretend to be frustrated or rejected.

When you take ownership and personal responsibility for your life, you position yourself to learn and grow from your mistakes. Taking ownership always empowers us. Denying responsibility will always disempower us.

The irony is, no one will beat you up or reject you more than yourself. There is no one who is as hard on us as we are on ourselves. We need to protect ourselves from ourselves. We are always our own worst critics. By preserving our self-esteem, we ultimately are kinder to ourselves.

Your true self has nothing to do with the roles you play daily: salesperson, parent, weekend athlete, son or daughter, and suburban hipster. Although you cannot ignore your roles and deny them, they should not rule you. All you need to do is make peace with them. Your true self cannot be defined by anything or anyone. The reality is, if we did not mind being rejected, you would not think and dwell on being rejected. It is the ‘minding’ of being rejected, not rejection itself that is harmful.

Taking responsibility allows you not to take things so personally. Frederick Douglas said what protected him from all the low points in his life was the posture, “I shall not allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him.” Don’t get down on your prospects because ultimately it leads to getting down on yourself. Also, the mind can’t differentiate between when you are down and mad at another person or when you are down on yourself. Protecting what you think about protects your self-esteem.

It has been said that we decide what we want to see before we see it. We will find whatever we are looking for in our sales career because all perception is a choice and a matter of deciding to take or not take personal responsibility. So whatever you put your attention on, you become the creator of.

It is also human nature to milk our biographies for entertainment value, sympathy and self-righteousness. We love our scripts. Most of us would be nonentities without them. They are truly our false identity that we desperately cling to.

If you want to take control of your life and operate under the power of your true identity and true self-worth, then there is good news for you: there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. The bad news is, if you take on this new persona, there also is nothing special about you and nothing special about anyone else. Your true self-worth is not measured by any external factors. Remember, your true self-worth has no vested outcome in any of your day-to-day roles.

Other articles you might like:

• Deal or No Deal: Minimize “Definite Maybes”
• The New Hire — Doing It Right
• The Telephone — Sales Tool or Club
• Conquering the Fear of Closing
• Terms of Engagement… To Get Trust You Must First Extend It