I think we can learn a lot from seeing how others make mistakes – I know that’s how I’ve learnt how NOT to be an employer.
Problem is that all sales courses teach the same methods. The methods which make me cringe because they feel disingenuous. I’m sure we’ve experienced those sales experiences where we feel cornered and obliged to say yes.
A few years back, I had attended a public speaking event – a get to know the company and learn about public speaking session. It ended up being 3 hours of being sold too. 3 hours of being convinced we should part with thousands to join their course
I felt like I had wasted 3 hours of my life.
A week later he called. And asked for my feedback. I was honest and said I would have liked to have their style of teaching in action rather than him singing his own praises.
I guess this comes down to emotional intelligence. If I’d had that feedback from a client, I’d have listened and said yes, we’ll look into implementing. Instead his next sentence was a push on a sale for his course.
I said I wasn’t interested. I mentioned I’d tried courses with another company and was likely to continue as they offered more value.
I’ve previously blogged about not keeping an eye on your competitors. I could tell by his next comment he kept a very good eye on them and felt like he was in competition. In my eyes there was little competition – one was clearly way ahead in terms of knowing how to speak with people and relationship building.
So he goes on to call the founders of the other company kids barely out of diapers who have no clue what they’re doing and he has more experience than they have been alive. Just ewww. Never do that!!!
He then proceeded to say there must be something fundamentally wrong with me to deny such an amazing opportunity. Way to turn off a potential customer forever!
If you have to force someone to sign up to you, you are never going to have them cheering your corner. They’ll feel cornered and peeved they parted money over something they didn’t need.
Don’t become like this sales person (his background was pure sales for decades – and you could tell for a mile).
0 Comments