The other day I dealt with a Car Salesman. I was not buying a car, simply turning in my old company car (Toyota Camry) for a new one (Chevy Impala).
I mentioned to the man that I was sad to let the old one go for a few reasons: mainly gas mileage and size of gas tank. (I drive A LOT and that requires A LOT of down time filling up. Even more in an Impala.)
The salesman threw the few obvious jabs at Toyota and then mentioned a little sticker on the driver side door of the Toyota that basically said, if you lean on the door wrong an air bag could go off and cause serious injury and/or death.
He would not leave that alone.
“Do you have kids, what if they leaned on the door wrong?”
“Have you ever leaned on this door?”
“You’re in insurance, what if someone else leaned on the door wrong, wouldn’t you be liable?”
By the time I had switched my traveling office from the old car to the new car, he must have mentioned the sticker six times.
Lessons I personally learned as a salesman:
1. Sell MY Product. If you have a pain point and I am clever enough to get it out of you, or you simply want to tell me, well that’s something we can run with. However, after my experience, I don’t think I will ever walk in and assume that I know your pain points caused by my competitors.
2. Validate your pain. (The car salesman did nothing to validate my ridiculous concern of having to fill up more frequently.)
3. Find out more before I talk. Earn your trust as a consultant, so you want to hear and buy into my ideas.
Well, well... if it ain't the pain-point master. I gotta tell you Walker, I might have done that to you one day. Will you ever forgive me? NaH, but seriously, my two cents on this:
ReplyDelete1. I like the third bullet. Most of the times we rush in and force the sale. I would say: Find out what matters to the buyer (which most of the times is not that obvious)
2. Use the power of Yes! This would have been a good strategy for the salesman. Getting your customer to positively comment on your product makes it easy for you to sell.
As an example, my customers often ask questions that are more than likely answered with a NO or negatively (can't, not possible, etc). Instead of going to a direct NO, I just let them talk, then I paraphrase so they answer positively and then I throw an alternative option. That way they never heard me say NO or talk negatively about my product. Then I do one of my closing sale statements... Has it worked? Yes, most of the time. Do I do it often? Well, I try to keep it for special cases.