Sales Through Education

Many years ago, I once heard that a sales technique used by a door to door company was to hand the order form to a prospect at the door in such a way that when the person grabbed the clipboard the pen rolled down the page and was instinctively picked up by the customer before it fell to the floor. The thought was that the customer, now with order pad and pen in hand, would be more likely to actually sign the order! Talk about manipulation.

Today’s world is far too sophisticated for the “rolling pen on a clipboard” routine. Nonetheless, manipulation is still rampant. Don’t go there! After all, you really don’t want sales. What you want are clients. Clients who “buy”, not people you have “sold” to.

What people want today is objective information on something that is relevant to them and presented by a trusted provider.  Need an example? Think of how dominating CNN was before FOX News entered the arena. Why did FOX News so rapidly outpace CNN? Because a tremendous number of viewers did not trust CNN as a presenter of objective information. Many people considered CNN to be politically biased to the left, so when FOX News became available as the self-promoted provider of information that was “fair and balanced” the great switch was on.

When presenting to a prospect, think about the information as just that… information. Decide before hand that your disposition will be to not make a sale, but rather to simply provide information. If you approach your interviews this way they will be much less stressful for you, your prospect’s instinctive defenses will melt away, and you’ll find that your sales – like FOX News, fair and balanced, will sky rocket!