IT NEVER HAPPENS TO ME

I have been involved in several industries over my career as a sales trainer, and I have made an untold number of sales calls either by myself or while training a rep. Many times during these sales calls either I or the rep I have been training has been talking to a customer about something that has happened or has been a problem in just about every other business like theirs that we have been in. It never fails, the customer usually looks back at us with a straight face and says, “I have never had that happen” or “that has never happened to me”.

This is a reaction that you get when you haven’t earned the right to know about the customers problems. In other words, you have no rapport with the customer. Notice I didn’t say relationship, I don’t believe a relationship can be built during a first sale. Relationships are built over time based on trust and honesty. Rapport on the other hand can be built from the first few minutes of the sale and strengthened as the sale progresses.

You wouldn’t want to tell someone your problems if you didn’t know them and at least have a gut feeling about them that told you they could be trusted. A customer is no different.

As you start your sales process, let the customer know that you value your customer’s privacy and that you will hold anything they tell you in confidence. By doing this the customer knows that you won’t tell them about any other businesses in the area and you won’t tell any other businesses about them. The next step is NOT TO TELL! If you say you will keep everything in confidence and then tell the customer about every other business you have talked to, you won’t ever build trust.

So let’s circle back to the start of this post. You ask a customer about a problem or situation you have heard about. Is this breaking the confidence? NO. You can talk about information just never give business names or use the names of people. I can say that I have heard theft is a big problem in this area. I can’t say, Bill down the block told me he was having a big problem with theft.

The first is uncovering a potential problem, the second is having a big mouth! I hope you can see the difference. If you say Bill said he was having a lot of trouble with theft are you having the same trouble? Even if they are you will hear the “That doesn’t happen here” line.

As a sales rep we want to bring the best and newest information to our customers and prospects, but we don’t want to get the reputation of being a blabber mouth.

There is an old saying that goes back to the World Wars, “LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS”, the same weapon looses sales every day.

Lorin