I wasn’t in a hurry when he phoned so I let him talk on – I was curious to know where he was going with his very fast, well-rehearsed, and seemingly endless patter.
He began by talking about how he wanted to create a relationship between his and our company in which we would provide his corporate customers with NLP-based staff development programmes. His fast delivery would have made it difficult for me to ask any clarifying questions even if I’d wanted to.
So he talked on and on and on. Good, old-fashioned talk-’em-into-submission selling. None of your fancy ‘needs analysis’ stuff – in fact, he asked no questions about our likely needs. And gave no factual information – just the benefits to us (as he saw it) of ‘working together’!
Now, since I don’t often get to hear (or, more accurately, bother to listen to) such classic examples of this approach to selling, I let him carry on, wondering how he’d get to the ‘hook’ and ask us to commit to paying money to his company.
But after about 10 minutes I did run out of patience – it was too amateurish and too patronising and, although I wasn’t in a hurry at the start, I’d now begun to think of other things to do with my time.
So I bluntly asked what he was selling and how much he wanted. Mind you, it did take a few attempts to nail him down but I discovered that his company would introduce us to a few potential customers for the trifling sum of £12,000 (for their starter package). I could now see why he was loathe to get to the point.
What amazes me is that sales people are still being trained in this style. Even back in the 70′s when I first began looking at selling skills the talk-at-em approach was going out of fashion.
Even further back Bert H Schlain, the 1950′s sales guru and author of Big League Salesmanship, warned salespeople about talking too much saying ‘Samson slew 10,000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass – and every day 1000′s of orders are killed in the same way’!
Selling is just part of the bigger picture of ‘influencing’. And like all forms of influencing selling is a listen-first process. Good influencers talk less and listen more! It’s the essential first step in walking the talk of the NLP Principle: ‘meet people in their model of the world’ which, in plain English, means get to know how a person experiences the world if you truly want to influence them.
The sad thing is he could have been a good sales person. He was bright, personable and used his voice well. He just didn’t have the skills for the job.
In the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Steven Covey urges us to first understand people before attempting to influence them. In our own NLP courses we recommend a consultative approach to all forms of influencing, including selling, through favouring questions rather than statements – because telling is not selling…
