Recently, I was just in the buying position on a sales call. And I want to break down what the experience was like for me. Because there were some obvious things that the guy could have done differently. So, I figured it'd be useful for you if I unpack it in this episode of the podcast.
Introduction And Rapport Building
For starters, the guy just went straight into,
“Hey, yeah. Okay, cool. Where are you from?”
“Oh, okay. That's nice. Great.”
“And how did you hear about us?”
“Okay. So what I want to do is ask you some questions and see if it's fit or not and then yeah. Does that sound good?”
The big thing bere was that it felt very scripted. This is something I teach inside our program – we won't really have time to go into it here – but there's this idea of baseline energy. And I could feel that the guy was way above his baseline. So it was uncomfortable for me because I could tell he wasn't confident, he wasn't cool.
Confidence isn't a, “Yeah, I know everything,” type of thing. Confidence is a, “I'm me. You're you. What's up?” thing. That's all confidence really is.
No One Wants To Be “Talked At”
I didn't feel like I was having a conversation with a person. It felt like I was being talked at the whole time. The key to making sure a prospect doesn’t feel talked at is when meeting them at your baseline.
There’s this idea in sales, enthusiasm sells. And so when people get on a sales call, they try to be too friendly and it's like,
“HEY, HOW'S IT GOING? COOL MAN. WELL, I WANTED TO ASK YOU SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS…”
And you don't feel like you're in dialogue. So, from the beginning, I wasn't vibing the guy and that's simply a matter of him not coming in at his baseline energy level.
If you listen to me talking on the podcast, that’s my baseline. My natural energy level. And so if I get on a call, I'm going to talk to you like that because I know who I am.
I'm not going to come into the call like,
“HEY MAN, HOW’S IT GOING? AWESOME! GREAT TO MEET YOU! WELL, SO HERE’S WHAT I WANT TO DO WITH YOU TODAY! HERE’S OUR AGENDA!”
Because if I talk to you like that, you'd be like, “f*** this guy.” Right? The brain just says, “Nope! I don't like that guy.”
How To Ruin Discovery
His discovery was just miserable. The worst discovery I've ever encountered. Ever. He was already pitching me the offer 3 to 5 minutes in. The weird part is I still might buy their stuff because their offer was pretty good.
But this guy, his sales process was awful. Nice guy, don't get me wrong, he was super nice. But I can just tell like he's not a trained salesperson. And his discovery was really shallow.
A big part of Discovery is the buyer's sophistication. This is also something we cover in-depth inside of our program.
He met me at a low sophistication level. I guess some of their clients come in at low sophistication, where they're struggling and need a lot of help. But I wasn’t struggling. I just want to do more faster. So, it's not like I'm a total newb. And if you talk to me like I'm a total newb, then you're going to miss me.
And so, while evaluating me, he got off of his game because he wasn't experienced with someone who is already doing well but wants to go faster and do more.
So he met me at the wrong sophistication level and instead of trying to understand my worldview, he just presented his offer. Which made me think, “Wait, what the hell is happening right now?”
When The Buyer Has To Take Over The Call
I like to show up as the best buyer in the world. I want to follow your lead. I’m not going to be rude or take control of your call. I want you to give me a pleasurable buying experience.
I know what it’s like to have a prospect on the other end who’s like, “just get to the point,” and who try to hijack the call. I hate talking to people like that. So I’m not going to do it when I’m the buyer.
But on this call, after a certain point, I just had to take control. He couldn't lead me. So I stepped in and had to say,
“Hey man, is it cool if I just start asking you some questions?”
And then I gathered all the pieces of information I needed about the product to make a buying decision. After which I was able to say,
“Okay, cool. This is what we'll do in terms of next steps.”
But he was a total beta in the process and that's where he lost the sale.
Conclusion
How you handle the start of the call determines what happens at the end. And I really felt that on this call, sitting in the buyer’s seat.
In this case, the sales rep messed up at the beginning by not coming in on his baseline and then also misread my sophistication level. Because he misread the sophistication level, he wasn't able to do a valuable discovery. So the whole call felt awkward and weird.
This is something we see a lot of entrepreneurs (if they’re still taking calls) and sales reps struggle with. They will get really good at selling broke people or people in the middle of the market or people in the higher end of the market, and they won’t be able to sell to the rest of the market.
You need to figure out how to sell the entire spectrum. If you can sell high-end affluent people, middle-market, and bottom-of-the-barrel, you’ll be closing deals all day every day.
If you enjoyed this, you’ll also enjoy our free case study. I go through our ATM System – how we attract, train and manage multi-million-dollar sales teams. And I also give you examples where we’ve successfully implemented the ATM System with our clients. Click here to get access.