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Stuff you don’t need to know …
Posted by Clayton Shold in Sales Tips
Montpelier Vermont is the only state capital that does not have a McDonald’s restaurant.
Almost half the newspapers in the world are published in Canada and the U.S.
The oldest rabbit in the Guinness Book of World Records died at the age of 18.
The life span of a housefly is normally 17 days.
There is some information you just don’t need to know.
I was working with Joe, a middle aged sales rep last week who has been struggling getting a second appointment with his prospects. I suggested we role-play his approach. Joe gave a great opening statement, providing an agenda of what we would cover and how we’d go about doing so. He also mentioned up front his objective was to determine if there was enough interest for us to meet again and discuss his services in more detail.
I was a pretty agreeable prospect. The meeting went on for about 25 minutes. When we concluded he asked for my feedback. I said I’d be happy to give feedback, but wanted to hear first how he thought things went. Joe thought he was successful building rapport and was pleased in this case I had agreed to a subsequent meeting.
My turn. I agreed he had done a good job building rapport initially but he lost ground moving forward. I asked him what my basic needs were in regard to his service offerings. He couldn’t tell me. He spent a good fifteen minutes telling me “stuff I didn’t need to know.” It was a features dump of all the things he could do for me. I kept thinking to myself, “so what?” The problem was, at the end of our meeting Joe hadn’t connected any of the dots. He had no idea of which of his service offering many have matched potential needs on my part. He didn’t ask enough questions. He fell trap to dong all the talking. My estimate, Joe talked 85% to 90% of the time. He had no platform from which to spring benefit statements to catch my attention.
Take a look from the prospect’s perspective. What is that they probably don’t need to know? Do they need to know there is no McDonalds in Montpelier or the oldest rabbit lived to be 18? Then don’t tell them. Ask some good quality questions to under stand what they want to know. Perhaps it is how long a housefly lives or which two countries publish half the world’s newspapers. If you know the answer you can tell them. You’ll look even smarter if you leave knowing your prospect and what is important to them.
Clayton Shold
Salesopedia
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