COMMENTS
Good sales technique is derived from genuine curiosity without judgment. IMHO, the only supportive judgment good salespeople have is that the sale is NEVER completed. Even after the check clears, there’s always back-end business and referrals hanging in the balance, so ideally the selling process should never end.
Whenever I hear a salesperson claim with extreme confidence that a sale will close, I get nervous. Conversely, top-notch salespeople are always concerned with where the proverbial holes are – Where will a crack in the dyke appear next?
Weak salespeople make judgments. I liken it to stereotyping: If someone thinks that blondes are dumb, then there’s no need to be curious. The stereotyper has all the information they need about this person with blonde hair and the only task remaining is to “convince” others of their (false) judgment.
Suppositions about what constitutes a “lot of money” or the appropriate amount of research and time required to make a buying decision are good examples of “pre-judging” that will undermine a salesperson. I see these and countless others every day in training sessions.
Once the salesperson’s genuine curiosity wanes, the sale is endangered.
How true about the topic. I've been there & done that so often it makes me cringe. I'm trying to get back into the sales force & hop I've learnt my lesson.
I had a job where ever week I was asked for the dollar value of every opportunity in my pipeline and the probability that it would close (and when). It was frustrating to the owner that although I could guess at the value, the probablity of closing was always zero (but I did usually know the timeline). My attitude was that if I didn't get the deal, I didn't want to disappoint anybody (especially myself) by having put too much value on the opportunity. However, once it closed, I moved into strategic account management mode or client retention mode and I could multiply 100% by the amount of the sale that I had already booked and that was REAL. That was a sale that I took away from the competition for all time. Me, 1, Them, (Whatever they had before I got this one.) When I get the next one, it'll be 2 to whatever, and so on.
Pretend I sell a $100,000 deal. Done. Delivered. Paid for. Happy customer. Pretend also that a competitor has three deals in their pipeline each worth $100,000 and each about one third of the way through the sales process. I can spend my $100K. My competitor can't. Mine is definite. His is 'possible, probable, not definite'. He's still working on his three deals (I probably will work on his three deals, too!), but he can't work on mine.
I hope this made sense. I agree with Dave, don't count it until it's real. I agree with Chip, earn it forever.
Rick