It’s time for Ditch the Pitch Habits #3 and #4 – Say Yes and Explore and Heighten in my series of The Seven Ditch the Pitch Habits. These habits are about creating mutual agreement and affirmation with your customer … pay attention to them and you will know How to Propel a Sales Conversation Forward.
In a scene from the movie The Social Network, the story of the early days of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and his partner Eduardo Saverin are riding in a taxi after their first sushi-restaurant meeting with Napster founder Sean Parker. Eduardo had been lobbying to sell ads on Facebook, and Mark had been resisting because he thought it was too early. (Facebook had 75,000 members at that point, in 19 colleges.) The issue comes up again during the cab ride, and Mark reminds Eduardo that Parker had said that being “cool” was the best thing Facebook had going for it, and ads could ruin that. Mark then quoted Parker directly: “Selling ads would be like throwing a party and having it end at 11PM.”
Eduardo responds that he has to worry about paying for the party, and Mark shoots back this line: “There won’t be a party if it’s not cool.”
This is a great lesson for ditching the pitch: Don’t turn a genuine encounter into a sales conversation too quickly. Be patient. Earn the trust of the person you are dealing with, and you will earn the right to have your discussion evolve into a sales conversation. And never, ever, let it turn into a sales pitch.
Imagine being invited to play golf by a friend who sells insurance, and realizing by the 3rd hole that the only reason he invited you was to pitch you life insurance. Imagine talking to a neighbor at your street’s block party, and realizing that his enthusiasm for the conversation is really just eagerness to sell you new siding for your house. In either case it might be possible to turn you into a customer, but not if they do it too quickly. Once you see the sales pitch coming, you duck.
In hindsight, it’s interesting to see that Facebook now has many “uncool” things about it that it didn’t have back in its early days – ads, stretching the limits of using member data, open to everyone (not just college students). Facebook clearly gets away with this – it’s the #2 trafficked website on the Internet (after Google.) But Zuckerberg and Parker were right, the party would have never happened if it hadn’t been cool first.
Have patience. Let’s the party get going. Relax and have a good time with your customer. You’ll know when it’s time to start selling.
In my last newsletter article I described the Seven Ditch the Pitch Habits. In today’s issue, How to Start a Sales Conversation I focus on the first two of those habits, Be alert to be quick on your feet, and Size up the scene.
Everyone can ditch the pitch and learn to be more persuasive, whether you are a sales star, a sales neophyte, or someone who is not in a sales job but needs to persuade people to do things or agree with you. These two habits lay the foundation for great sales conversations. Start using them now!
Want to sell more? Don’t Think So Much is the topic of today’s newsletter.
And … you’ll see how the director of comedy studies at Second City and a professor of otolaryngology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine arrive at the same conclusions.
Does it irritate you when a sales person talks too much? (It irritates me!)
Doesn’t it make him or her less effective? (I think so!)
Today’s newsletter, Say Less. Sell More., focuses on this key principle of selling: Talk less.
Imagine this … one of your customers is speaking with a friend, and suddenly notices that the friend should also be your customer. After witnessing this opportunity, what does he do? Recommend you, or let the opportunity pass by?
Check out today’s newsletter, Will your customers be witnesses for you?
Please share your comments … are your customers witnesses for you? Do you ever serve as a witness for others, noticing business opportunities for them?
What’s my answer when somebody asks me for 3 Tips for Better Customer Conversations?
You don’t want to miss these tips… they can help you improve your conversations today.
Read the newsletter: “3 Tips for Better Customer Conversations“
Today’s newsletter, Everything your customer says is true, reminds us that the customer is not always right, but even when the customer is wrong we need to figure out how to deal with it.
You can get frustrated, you can try to tell the customer he is wrong, or you can recognize his reality and then work from there. Guess which works better …
Why do people with all of the facts often fail to communicate?
My father, Shelby Yastrow, coined a wonderful metaphor to describe this. Check out today’s newsletter, “You know all the words, but not the music.”
Steve writes in today’s newsletter, Sales Conversations: Earning the right to be heard, “The first thing we need to do, if we want customers to listen to us, is to earn the right to be heard.”
This solution is part empathy and part smart selling – if we want our customers to listen to us, we must first listen to them and learn what they care about. We know this as a general rule, but how many of us earn the right to be heard each and every time we talk with a customer or prospect?
Get some sales inspiration. Read today’s newsletter, Sales Conversations: Earning the right to be heard.
"When Steve Yastrow writes, I pay close attention"
- Tom Peters
"I had to buy two copies. The first one is so dog-eared and underlined I couldn't read it any longer."
- Seth Godin
Microsoft's Retailspeak interview with Steve
Sign up for Steve’s blog
Read Steve's Free Ebook to start benefiting from profitable We relationships.
Encounters: The Building Blocks of We Relationships (Adobe PDF)
In addition to writing, I spend most of my work time helping companies unleash their potential by creating better connections with their customers. This happens through my speaking events and through Yastrow & Company consulting engagements, where my team and I help companies figure out who they intend to be in the future, and then engage the entire company in creating that future through strong "We" customer relationships.
Before starting Yastrow & Company in the mid-90s I was vice-president of resort marketing for Hyatt Hotels. My experiences in the hotel business showed me clearly that most marketing doesn’t happen in the marketing department. Customers are paying attention to all interactions with a company, not just the promises made in traditional "marketing communications."
For more information, see our About page.
