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Leave your emotions in the car
Gary Harvey //March 5, 2013//
Do you ever find yourself getting emotionally involved on a sales call?
Quick test: If you ever walked out of a sales meeting and thought “Oh, I should have asked that” or “I should have done that,” chances are, you got emotionally involved. Typically, this happens when you’re focused on the outcome (a yes or no), instead of the sales process, assuming you have one. I see a lot of “wing-it” sales processes out there.
I was recently talking to a president of a company, and he mentioned that his salespeople weren’t asking tough questions because they were too afraid to find out the truth. It was easier to add another prospect to their pipeline than risk finding out they were just the mandatory third quote. By the way, these types of prospects are often what I call “suspects.”
If you let your emotions lead the sales call, you can end up:
• Inflating your pipeline with suspects, not quality prospects.
• Cutting price and margins.
• Doing unpaid consulting.
• Wasting time with suspects who will never buy.
• Putting the pressure on yourself and/or the prospect.
Always be aware of your emotions and the different triggers: size of the account, end of the month, gender, age, experience, title, etc.
Here’s couple of selling rules I teach that might help you when you get emotionally involved:
A prospect who is listening is no prospect at all: This means you’re doing too much talking because you’re emotionally involved in the outcome vs. the process.
No salesperson ever listened themselves out of a sale: In other words, stop getting emotionally involved with the outcome and therefore talking too much. You can’t listen when you’re talking too much.
