A Sales Guy | Sales Advice | Sales Coaching In Sales Reality Doesn’t Matter | A Sales Guy | Sales Advice

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

Focusing on reality just doesn’t matter. All that matters is what your customer thinks.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve won JD Power customer service award 10 years in a row. If your customer thinks it’s terrible, it is. It doesn’t matter if your product has more features than your competition, if the prospect doesn’t think so, it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter if you implemented the project one week early, if the client felt it was late, it was.

In sales, what you think doesn’t matter. It’s what the customer thinks.

In sales there are two choices. Sell to perception or accept your customer is wrong and walk away.

What you can’t do is convince them they are wrong. That’s a fools errand.

In sales perception is reality. Address the customers perception, regardless of how different it is from yours.

When your food sucks it doesn’t change your mind to hear Wolfgang Puck prepared it with fresh seafood, flown in today, using the best cutlery forged by hand.

All you know is your food sucked.

Addressing the fact your customer thinks their food sucked will get you somewhere. Addressing why it doesn’t will get you somewhere too, just not the sale.

http://twitter.com/michaelcee Michael Caney

the opposite is also true. If your company/product/service doesn’t have the same facts/features/advantages as your competitor(s) claims but you can deliver the neccessary value, that perception of value trumps.
http://asalesguy.com Keenan

No doubt, perception can absolutely play to our advantage as well.
Joe Fisher

I agree Jim! Value is always defined from the perspective of the customer. It amazes me how sales managers will try to force what the “ivory tower” perceives as value upon the customer. If the customer doesn’t see the value or they see it differently, then the arrogance kicks in and the conclusion is that the customer is wrong and we are right. That’s what I call a lose-lose scenario.
http://asalesguy.com Keenan

Sales management has a tendency lose sight of the customers perspective. I’ve seen it far more often than you’d expect.
guest

Not trying to be argumentative. Whether what you’re saying is correct or not from the perspective of being able to close a deal, the fact that so many sales professionals believe it is correct is what makes the rest of the world mistrust sales professionals.

It presumes that all clients are driven by irrational emotional beliefs and are incapable of responding to logic and facts. Sadly, most sales professionals have no clue what the range of issues are that motivate people. Yes, all of us are driven by various emotional forces, many of which we may not even be aware of. But we do know when someone is telling us what he thinks we’re wanting to hear and usually our emotional response to that is very predictable.
http://asalesguy.com Keenan

Clients are very capable of responding to logic and facts, how a sales person responds to the client is the key element. I’m suggesting in this post that Sales people need to sell to the clients perception of the situation not their own.
Patrick Ahern

Perception is reality!
http://twitter.com/wilburnu Jon Wilburn

I agree with you here Jim. I do have a question/statement though. You are NOT suggesting that if the client is dead wrong that we leave them thinking that way right? At times we need to be a little “edgy” as Dan Waldschmidt would put it and tell them they are wrong, or at least correct some misconceptions, don’t we?
http://asalesguy.com Keenan

Not suggesting we let them stay that way, but don’t suggest we tell them they are wrong. We can challenge them for sure, challenge the data the have, the success measurement they use etc. The key is to be sensitive to their perception and then sell to it, not deny it.
http://www.iamronen.com iamronen

This seem out of alignment with your excellent post on not confusing likes and rights (great word “rights”. It seems that when it comes to “making a sale” – it isn’t as important to distinguish between the two?

I once had the pleasure of eating a macrobiotic meal – at first there wasn’t much to like about it – it was pretty bland – but after a while I realized how grateful my body was for the food – it was a much better like then the more superficial like of flavor.

When I first met my Yoga teacher, she taught me to use precise and structured breathing as a container for movement – for the first month – I really hated it. Now I know that I was given a key to one of the greatest qualities Yoga has to offer.

When people hit “don’t like”, convincing is indeed futile. When it comes to that I first ask myself if there is something I can say or do to recreate a curiosity – if I manage that, then I have an opportunity for sharing more insight and information (I don’t like convincing) – otherwise – I take a step back and either wait or walk away.

I often found myself in these “don’t like” situations when I was doing design work. When the conversation came down to “likes” – it was usually a dead end. 95% of the time it led to either business frictions or compromised design.

In Sales Reality Doesn’t Matter

Keenan 411

Keenan a Top 50 Sales and Marketing Influencer for 2012

Get My Newsletter

Archives

Categories

Translation