Beware the Eager Beaver

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It’s pretty easy to completely sabotage a sales process with a client if you suddenly transform into an “eager beaver” too early.

Eager beavers want to help. They want to work hard. They want to see the client succeed.

In school, being an eager beaver makes you stand out. Teachers like that.

In business, this approach makes people run away, despite what good intentions you may have.

Believe it or not, before you are hired, the value you provide to the marketplace doesn’t need to be focused on talking about your solutions.

Instead, you can focus the majority of your time on PAIN. On making it clear to the prospect exactly what pain they have, how it is affecting their journey, what could happen if the pain continues unresolved.

This is actually an enormous value.

But if every prospect conversation you have focuses on FIXING things, and how you are going to fix them, there will be no attraction.

And here we come to the subtlety that makes all the difference:

Before you are hired, digging deep into the HOW of the solution for the prospect doesn’t build attraction, it kills it.

This is why so many technical folks have trouble selling. They are 100% immersed in communicating the “how” of their solution.

What does work then?

Painting a clear picture of the life or business of the prospect WITHOUT the pain, painting a clear picture of success… that does build attraction. See the difference?

Allowing your eagerness to focus you on the HOW of what you’re going to do is really the least interesting part of the whole thing for your prospect. You focus on the outer ENDS of their world.

Their pain is at one end, their world without that pain is at the other end. The vehicle from one point to another (YOU) is not nearly as interesting to them.

This is human nature.

Think about what happens during a traditional doctor visit. You walk in, the doctor starts poking and prodding… “Does it hurt there? How about there? There?”

This is done for two reasons:

  1. First, the doctor wants to adequately assess the situation.
  2. Second, the doctor wants to show you PROOF of your current situation.

Take a look at what you’re doing with prospects and see if your eagerness to help them is turning you into your own worst enemy.