Your customers are selling you as much as you’re selling your customers.
Anytime you’re in the middle of a heated presentation with a customer, it’s only natural for the customer to start trying to sell you. You might ask what are they trying to sell you? It’s simple — they’re trying to sell you why they don’t want what you’re offering, but only with enough emphasis not to have you run away. They just want you to make them a better deal.
Today’s economy has only compounded this problem where everybody thinks for some reason they’re special and, therefore, they should have a deal that’s special to them. It’s easy to fall into the customer’s trap, as it usually begins with the customer expressing some hesitation. However, at the same time as they’re expressing some hesitation, they’re usually sharing with you the unique problems and issues they have.
I’ve found customers love to share their unique issues with the salesperson because they believe that by sharing what they believe is unique to them, the salesperson will then extend to them an offer that’s not available to anyone else.
New salespeople fall for this very quickly. At the same time, I’ve watched many veteran salespeople unknowingly fall into it also. This is especially true when the customer and salesperson are of opposite sexes. The way you avoid this trap is by staying firm in the confidence of what your price/value relationship is.
Once you start wavering with one customer you will find yourself wavering with many more customers to the point that if you don’t catch yourself you will start going into every selling situation thinking beforehand how you’re going to personalize the offer to allow the customer to have a unique deal.
Copyright 2011, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog.
