On a sales call, you want to avoid going toe-to-toe with your potential client. You never want your client to see you as an opposing force to the direction they’re trying to go.
The customer is always right.
But what happens when the customer is wrong? What happens when the client doesn’t want to buy your product even though you truly believe they are a great fit?
Most of the time, you are going to be on the opposite side of the table from your client.
Your client wants a discount and you want to sell them on the premium package. Your client wants to keep the product that they’ve had for years instead of buying your new cutting-edge product, Your client wants to wait another week to make their buying decision and you want them to buy right away.
But you can’t let your client FEEL this opposition. You have to be on the same team with your client working toward the same goal, THEIR goal. Like you’ve talked to a thousand other customers that were in their exact same situation and you understand.
Now, there will be very specific points in the language of the call where this plays out.
For example, if a client says, “I want to do it MY way.”
In your head, you know doing it their way won’t lead to the sale. But you can’t say that. You can’t respond to the client with any of these words: no, unfortunately, sorry. Because then you become an opposing force. Then you’re clearly on the other side of the table.
You have to say, “Okay, I totally understand. We’re going to do it YOUR way.”
And then the magic is that you have to make your client’s way and your way seem like one and the same. For example, your client doesn’t want to pay until Monday (and it’s currently Friday).
“No worries, I can collect your payment details right now and then wait to charge your card until Monday.”
Or, your client doesn’t want to sit through your 30-minute pitch.
“You’re right, you’re busy. That’s way too long. How about this? Can I just ask you a few questions.”
And then you can work in the key pieces of value from your pitch after your client has opened up and spoken a little about themselves.
The best way to summarize this whole idea is this way: you have to round the corners. Your client is going straight and you need them to make a right turn. You can’t put a STOP sign in the middle of the road and make your client turn at a ninety degree angle.
Instead, you have to slowly build a curve into the road over the entire sales encounter. The curve is subtle in the same way that the round earth looks flat. Before the client knows it, they’ve ended up where you wanted them to go all along, but at any given moment they thought they were going straight on their own path.