The Problem With Getting To Yes

📅  22nd August 2017 | Selling

As outlined in this video, the problem with getting to a “yes” is that there are three types of “yes’s” – I wont elaborate here but as sales people we’ve been taught to get people to say “yes”. It’s been forced upon us in 20th Century sales training methods and in books with titles like “Getting to Yes”. These tell you about sales funnels and using certain techniques to get the micro-commitments or whatever fancy term or word is flavour of the month.

The issue here is that buyers are wise to these techniques and run for the hills if they feel they’re being manipulated – we all know that people do not like to be sold to, they like to buy. So how do we square this “commitment circle”?

Suppose we do something counter intuitive – like going for a “no”. Consider this type of interaction early on in a sales meeting…

Salesperson: “Do you think you have the right mix of staff to compete with those new announcements from your competitors”?

Customer: “It’s hard to find the right people, it’s a very competitive marketplace and people move around so much. So no, at the moment. It’s a struggle”

Do you see how much more powerful a “no” is? And the salesperson here has engineered a possible opening from a thoughtful “closed” question.

 

 

Tags: sales

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