NLP & GO

SALES 3: What Your Customer Does not Want (2)

Date: 10/16/2005

Another purpose of sales is to protect the buyer (continued from previous NLP & GO article).

The second application would be if the purchaser has his own personal reservations. 

I know someone who sold computers about 5 years BPE (before the Pentium era, that is). They were IBM compatible, manufactured in China, and cost almost half the price of a similar IBM model.  I was curious why anyone would pay almost twice the price just for the name IBM.

          "As they say," he explained to me, "nobody ever got fired for buying an IBM."

In other words, here the buyer's reservation would be:

          "Will the boss be upset if something goes wrong with this Chinese computer and hold it against me for not buying a well-known brand such as IBM."

The sales person might deal with this by telling the buyer:

          "Listen, this computer is every bit as excellent as the IBM and much more cost-effective.  I want both you and your boss to be happy with your purchase.   Please go and discuss it with him.  If you prefer buying the brand name than you can back out of the deal and it is fine with me".  (You might want to elaborate more on the advantages of the Chinese computer).

Give it a try!  Listen actively; often their reservation will surface at some point during your conversation.   In addition, observe the client. Are they hesitating?   Are there changes in their facial expressions or in their voice tone?  These may be signs that they have some reservation. If you do observe any of these, ask them if they have any questions.  If they do have reservations, deal with them as above.   Remember to practise this with someone before using it in real life.

Please send me your personal experiences relating to this article.