How more sell conversation

One of the things you must never do when it comes to selling your services is use a sales pitch you intend to memorize and spew at a potential client. However, that isn't to say you shouldn't prepare to have a conversation with a buyer about working together because you should. Here's why you never want to use a sales pitch.

The first reason you never want to use a sales pitch is because it instantly puts you in the sales person category. Most people do not think of sales people as trusted experts or trusted advisors. Most people think sales people are only out to sell you something whether it's the right thing for you or not. Thus most people do not trust sales people.

So the instant you start pitching a buyer you trigger that persons defenses. They automatically become more resistant to you. They will throw more objections at you, and they won't hesitate to lie to you.

The second reason you never want to use a sales pitch is because it disengages the person you are talking to. You now become the entertainer. They simply sit back and start thinking of reasons why whatever you are saying isn't true. They are looking for arguments for why what you say isn't true because they believe sales people lie. You are showing them you are a sales person so in their minds you are probably lying to them.

Perhaps the most important reason you never want to use a sales pitch is because you will never gain the trust of the person you are trying to sell to so they will tell you what you need to know to help them. This leaves you trying to guess what they think they want. You may as well go play Black Jack at the casino because the odds are more in your favor.

The best way to prepare for a sales conversation is to think about the questions you could ask that would help your potential client tell you what they need, why that's important, how they want to get what they need, and the true value of getting what they want. No matter how good you are at selling your services you won't get new clients unless you help them uncover how your services are what they are already looking for.

Every person has two sides. There's the outer professional side of our personality and then there's the inner side of our personality that we may almost never share. The more introverted your potential client the more unlikely it is that you are addressing what really motivates them to buy. Most people focus on this outer professional side when they are speaking to a potential client about working together.

That can be a huge mistake because the real buyer is that inner side that we don't necessarily want others to know about.

While a potential client might talk about a specific result they want they don't talk about why they want that result. Yet, it's the reason they want that result that drives this potential client to hire you. They may want the result because it would make them look good in front of someone else.

You can't tell a potential client how this result will make them look good in front of someone else because if you do you risk two negative things. First, you could miss the mark and get it wrong. Second, even if you get it right it may very well embarrass your potential client to have you voice what they are thinking out loud.

Plus when you guess and get it wrong that could mean losing the buyer.

To sell to the real buyer you simply have to help the buyer tell you what's really driving them to buy. They could be searching for approval, risk reduction, control, removal of a fear, increased visibility, etc. The only way for you to know is to ask how getting the outcome they want would impact them.

Not only do many service providers try to sell to the wrong buyer they also often try to lead a potential client to their way of thinking. That doesn't work. When you try to lead a potential client to an answer you have in mind it feels like you are trying to manipulate them.

Feeling like you are being manipulated instantly triggers your defenses and decreases your trust in the other person. That's very dangerous territory because it is very hard to recover once you trigger a potential client's defenses, if you ever can.