Sell or Be Sold(32)

The element of distrust is intensified when your prospect has had the negative experience of being ripped off by some earlier salesperson or at some time when he had a plain misunderstanding between what was said and what was promised. People have misunderstandings all the time, and misunderstandings can lead to distrust. I want you to try this simple exercise to prove my point: Write down a short story about something that happened to you and read that story to one person. Then have that person pass it on verbally to another person. Continue this until at least five people have heard the story. Have the last person come back and tell you what he was told and compare it to what you wrote down. I assure you that your story will have changed. It didn’t change because of lies, but because of incorrect duplication and misunderstandings. If you had passed your story in writing to each person, there would have been a greatly reduced chance of misunderstandings.





HOW TO HANDLE THE BUYER’S DISTRUST


The rule for handling a buyer’s distrust is to always use and show written material to support your presentation and proposal. When you’re documenting facts for your customer, it’s preferable to use third-party materials that support what you’re saying. Remember, people believe what they see, not what they hear.

Always, always, always write down what you’ve said, offered, proposed, promised, implied, and suggested. Anytime you’re going for the close, insist on putting it in writing.

I see so many salespeople shying away from contracts, buyer’s orders, and signatures! Why? Because they falsely believe that they may scare the customer with a pen or a contract. This is a ridiculous assumption that has no basis in reality.

You don’t go into a military operation without equipment and supplies, and you never go for the close without a pen and a contract! There’s nothing to hide. You aren’t a covert operative or some kind of criminal who needs to sneak around. You are a professional salesperson offering a product that will benefit and solve problems for your prospects when they purchase and own it.

When you’re presenting your product, write it down or show potential buyers the benefits on paper. If you’re showing them how your product will improve their business, show them the proof by using statistics and success stories. I used to keep an evidence manual with me to show my facts and what others had said as a result of doing business with me. People love to see that you are prepared and sold on your product.

When you show your prospect what your competition will do or will not do, prove it in writing. When you know you’ve got the best price, the best product, and the best service, always back it up with documentation. If you do this satisfactorily, you’ll earn trust and reduce the prospect’s need to shop, think, research, and talk to others, all the while increasing your odds of closing the sale.

It’s incredible how much significance people place on the written word. You want to capitalize on that. Every day, people quote things that they read in the paper without ever researching the facts for themselves. They assume that if it was written it must be true! People read books in school and then go through the rest of their lives believing that what was in the books was true. Twenty years ago a book was written and the first line read, “Life is difficult.” This book became a best seller and everyone adopted this one line as truth, when it was garbage. That line certainly isn’t true to me and it’s definitely not a quote that I’d live my life by. But because it was written, people assumed it was true and adopted it as their own reality.

Newspapers perpetuate things that are not true and history books are filled with errors, opinions, false reports, agendas, and even outright lies. Some of the best-known books were written many years after the events even took place and long after all of the players were dead. Yet if it’s written, people tend to believe it’s true! Remember the movie Jerry McGuire where the character played by Cuba Gooding Jr. kept saying to the Tom Cruise character, “Show me the money!” In sales, the customer is Cuba screaming, “Show me the data!” That’s the point here: Show the proof to the prospect, make it real to him, and he’ll have the confidence to buy.

With the abundance of information available today through third parties, consumer guides, the Internet, and other sources, your prospect becomes even more dependent on facts to support decisions. Buyers are going to continue to rely on these sources, so you need to make use of the same sources to support your cause and help the buyer make the right decision.

Anytime you’re presenting product information, performance reports, facts, historical data, comparison information, pricing data, proposals, etc., the rule is don’t tell, show. The automotive industry is notorious for not wanting to give information to prospects, and because of this error, the industry suffers from high turnover, poor loyalty, high advertising costs, and shrinking profits. The premise was, “The less they know, the better off we are!” Nothing could be further from the truth. The more the buyers know, the more they can trust the information and the more likely they are to buy. By offering written information, you’ll find that your sales will be easier, you’ll make more money, and you’ll have more satisfied customers.