People Don’t Like YOUR Ideas…
They like their own…
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What You’re About To Learn: Learn how to present your ideas to others so it gets accepted. If you present it as YOUR idea, most won’t like the idea right off the bat.
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A very interesting lesson I’m learning the more I dive into the “sales” role in our company has been how to position my sales pitch. I’m using these strategies to close “corporate accounts” but the strategies are not different for your everyday life (I use these new findings with my friends and family all the time).
The basic lesson is that when you want someone to do something, it’s your idea, not theirs, right? Your natural instinct is to go in and “convince” people, to make a case for why they should agree with you.
You’re going about it the wrong way, just like I always did…
I’ve since learned the art of “leading people into my own decisions…”
Don’t Convince Someone, Lead Someone…
Think of it this way, how likely are you to buy something when it’s YOUR own idea rather than if it’s someone else hounding on you to buy it.
Or, how likely are you to “start exercising” because you have yourself decided you need to lose weight, rather than having your friend tell you that you’re fat. You’ll actually resent your friend rather than listen to them.
Same goes with every other decision you need someone to make - ESPECIALLY at work. Are you trying to convince your boss to do something? Well, good luck, you’ll likely have very little success.
The art of getting your ideas accepted…
Don’t come right out and present your idea and start defending it. Do the opposite. Ask probing questions, questions that lead to answers which obviously lead to your idea.
Great sales people are the masters at doing this with Yes/No questions.
Let’s Assume You’re Trying To Sell Someone Something…
Let’s say it’s a “sales team management” software. You call a client and want to initiate a sale. Instinct would be to start telling them about all the great features and all the problems it solves, right?
Try this instead…
Start the call by asking them questions…
Background Information:
-> How many sales agents do you have?
-> What do they currently do the manage their leads?
-> etc…
PROBING Questions:
-> Wouldn’t you agree that “managing your follow-up calls” is a big problem John?
* Notice how I didn’t ask “what are your problems” but am leading John towards talking about a problem I have a solution for.
* I’d like ask some follow-up probing questions to his answer based on his reply - always keeping the conversation pointing towards problems my software solves.
-> John, you’re saying that you your inefficiencies probably mean you forget to follow-up with 30% of your customers right? If you even closed 10% of those, that means you’re missing out on 3% of overall sales - I guess that amounts to about $100,000 in revenue PER sales agent?
Wow, really sorry to hear that, that’s definitely a problem and I can see why it hurts so much!
* Notice how I’m starting to get John to really THINK about the problem and how bit it really is in the sense of lost revenue.
-> John, you’re probably also having multiple agents calling the same people right?
* Leads to another feature of the software…
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Anyways, you get the point. The above questions are all LEADING to John thinking up his OWN solution. John will probably come out of this thinking - “Yea! Wow, if someone could just create some automated solution for this, I’d save so much money!”
Congratulations! You’ve officially GIVEN YOUR idea to John and he just sold HIMSELF.
I know I just used a business example, but think about it - you can use things like this anywhere with anyone.
The basic idea is to always “LEAD people into a decision that you want” rather than to ask them to “MAKE a decision on that you want…”
Being a fighter means having full control on the situations around you and being able to fight for your own ideas is a huge part of it.
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June 17th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Oh man do I ever love this blog post!
I can’t tell you how many times I get pitched to in a week about someones fat loss product and them wanting me to ‘JV’ with them.
I put ‘JV’ in quotations because they say JV, but all they talk about is me selling their product.
They always start off by saying that their product is going to be the best thing that ever hit the fat loss industry. Really? That’s what 20 other people told me this week, and now you’re saying the same
I’m sure that the approach that you just covered in the blog post would work well in a sales letter for your product as well. It would leave the buyer feeling like they were the one that made the decision and that it was a decision not based so much on the emotions of the problem that they have and need to be fixed, but truly feeling like this is the product that’s right for them.
With all the scarcity and high pressure sales going on, it’s nice to know that you didn’t feel pressured and that the decision was made rationally.
Thanks for laying this strategy out in an easy to understand and real life example.
Keep up the great work!
Scott Tousignant
http://www.UnstoppableFatLoss.com
[Reply]
June 20th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Good psychology.
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