Stinger Barrels

Archive for March, 2009

A Champion only sells the benefits and features that the prospect he’s working with wants to buy. For years, I’ve watched this point, and I’m convinced that it’s critical to success: don’t sell what you want, sell what they want.
It’s astonishing how many salespeople only talk about, explain, and try
to sell the features of their offering that they like.
• “Oh, I just love the fact that it slices grapes,” and the prospect doesn’t give a hoot about what you love.
• “You know, I’ve got this same policy in my own investment portfolio,” and the prospects don’t see what that has to do with their investment
decision because your circumstances are different than theirs.
• “When you pour the O.P.E.C. to this beast—look out. It’s gonna ram you back in the seat. It’s gonna peel rubber.” And the prospect is a conservationist who worries about the high cost of fuel and wants an economy car.
The Champion doesn’t sell benefits before finding out what benefits the prospect wants. The average salesperson plunges into selling benefits from the start and, inevitably, he soon has the prospect sitting there thinking, “None of this stuff I’m hearing is important to me.” Keep that up for a little while and the prospect leaves if he’s on your premises, or you do if you’re on his. I’d like to be sure that we’re together in this area. Who pays for your product or service, you or the buyers?
Then we should give them what they want. Doesn’t that make sense?
We should sell them the features that will do the things they want done.
How does this fit my teaching that you should make decisions for your
clients?
Neatly. People want more than they can get. Money is only one of the great limitations that we all have. Time is another. People want their cars to be larger on the inside and smaller on the outside, their meals to be more delicious and less fattening, their investments to have higher return and lower risk. They want it all but you know they can’t have it all, so you have to decide, among your many products and services and their many desires, what specific item will fly for them. In most cases, you can’t afford to show them everything, and lead them step by step over every square foot of your knowledge to the one item they’ll buy. That’s not efficient, not professional, not money-making. The purpose of your consultation interview (which might be a few quick questions on the phone to a prospect, or a longer face-to-face interview in someone’s office) is to diagnose their problem, and determine what their opportunities are. Following that interview, you decide how to proceed. This process requires that you decide not to discuss a