Watch out you don’t over-sell the sale

Jul 01, 2014 by Wilson Hull

Tags: Sales

Don’t over-sell the sale

Or why your ABCs are old school

The old school model of selling used to teach the ABCs – Always Be Closing.  The model assumed that the ‘buyer’ was an audience for the ‘seller” and so needed to be prompted to engage.  In today’s world where clients have access to a lot of information and are active participants in the purchasing process this approach is outdated and could possibly even lose you the sale.

We were asked by a senior manager of a large organisation for a proposal to up skill their team of about 15-20 people.

While the manager was fairly new to the role, we had previously worked with many of the team members and had a good understanding of their roles and responsibilities, strengths, challenges and so forth.  Meeting with the client for the initial “diagnosis” session was a great opportunity to better understand what she wanted to achieve.  

It was also a chance to get to know her find out about her background and interests.  And of course for her to get to know us.

We felt the session went well and we seemed to hit it off!  We then proceeded to craft together a written proposal, with the completed document emailed through and then scheduled a meeting to go over the details of the proposal.

The meeting was planned for an hour – plenty of time to discuss the proposal, any questions, amendments and, if approved, consider the logistics. I have to say the meeting got off to a great start. Talking about all sorts of “non-work” topics, travel to Italy, food and favourite restaurants, what had been happening since we last met etc.  In fact so chatty, relaxed and enjoyable the hour was almost up.

That was the point I realised we had not yet talked about the proposal.  We were running out of time. I should raise the topic of the proposal!

Clearly my change in tone or transition language…. something alerted my colleague that I was about to talk about the proposal.  I sensed that because she subtly kicked me under the table. Taking the hint I didn’t bring up the topic of the proposal.   

At the end of the hour the client said “Oh is that the time ….good to talk today …. I’ll check out the possible dates to run the workshop”.

I had been approaching the meeting from the “map of my world” and how I saw it would or should run – that was review the proposal and get sign-off.  But from the client’s “map of their world” she had already reviewed the proposal, ticked all the technical/outcome boxes and her meeting objective was to decide if she comfortable working with us – the relationship.  I was that close to potentially losing the business by focusing on getting a close when the signals were already there that the sale was a done deal.

“No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
Theodore Roosevelt