Selling ideas
Thursday, June 18th, 2009While your prospect is working his way through this benefit calculation folder of yours, have another copy in front of you so that you can guide him every inch of the way. Where do you wind up at? The close. And your prospect is ready to make a favorable decision because he understands what he’ll be getting for his money, and he’s grateful to you for making him feel smart and Keogh seem simple.
Earlier in this chapter we talked about salespeople who try to overwhelm their prospects with amazing demonstrations—and succeed only in boring them. You may not worry about that because you’re troubled by the opposite problem: the prospects you demonstrate to aren’t amazed at the show you put on, and they’re too active, not too passive. They elbow you aside to get at the machine, pester you with questions, and demand instant answers. Your demonstrations remind you of a flock of seagulls scrapping over one fish. If you can hold your temper, you can make enough sales to keep going.
If that’s a rough description of your usual demonstration, rejoice:
you’re only a few easy jumps from perfecting a very successful mode of demonstrating. All you need do is organize the steps so that you keep control and they keep the machine you’re selling. In the next section I’ll tell you how to do that.