The Desert of Arizona
Sunny 36 Degrees
Seth Godin has an interesting post this morning with some sales advice for the Girl Scouts.
With the simple suggestion of opening the engagement with a straightforward question, the entire dynamic shifts around. The Girl Scout is put at ease, and the potential buyer is transported to a place that causes sales resistance to disappear.
You don’t have to be selling Girl Scout cookies to use this strategy with your prospective clients.
Don’t like selling yourself? Don’t want to become one of those high-pressure sales people?
Then ask questions.
This approach to selling is pretty close to miraculous. The reason I say that is because when you ask questions, a few amazing things happen:
- First, you assume control of the entire conversation. It’s a subtle but powerful form of control.
- Second, you focus your prospective client on her number one favorite subject: herself.
- Third, you instantly set yourself apart as a professional by using this approach. Professionals diagnose then prescribe, “vendors” are walking prescriptions in search of willing buyers.
- Finally, you actually get the information you need to better understand your client’s condition and how you can improve it.
The Girl Scouts are selling cookies. So they can probably get away with relying pretty heavily on that single question Seth recommends they ask.
If you’re selling professional services, you’ll probably want to ask a few other questions. A lot of them actually.
This will show you how to do it.
Understand this way of “selling” is a skill. It’s worth the practice to develop. If you give it some focus, you’ll quickly find it becoming your #1 most effective sales tool.