Here’s how I was sold something that I wasn’t even in the market for.
Have you seen small stalls for perfumes etc. in malls?
You wouldn’t think that their salespeople use human psychology more so than the modern B2B tech sales guy – and you’d be wrong.
I was walking past one of these stalls with my wife last week and I was stopped by one of these salespeople.
He got my attention by saying do you have a minute? He didn’t shove his product or offer in my face.
He quickly sprayed two men perfumes on two bits of paper and asked for my “help” to tell him which one I liked better.
Gave limited options – made me choose one option from a set of products that I had absolutely no intention to buy.
After we gave him our opinion, he validated that he liked the same one and repeated the same process for two more perfumes for women.
same validation process
And then the offer – individually these would cost this much while for today, he can offer a discounted price of x.
(it’s easier for people to visualize a discount expressed in currency as opposed to as a percentage)
After we pushed back and tried to move on, he looked shocked at how we could walk away from two products that we had said that we liked better than the alternatives.
The rest of the conversation was a lot of pushing & pulling which is a bit more routine but the following really stood out for me:
1. Not being salesy initially and pulling me into a conversation. Compare this approach with any of the sales email & LinkedIn sequences that all of us receive. The same message is sent to problem unaware people as it’s for problem-aware & solution-aware folks.
2. Increasing the level of buyer commitment – rather than show me four perfumes and then ask me to pick two – he divided this into two rounds.
3. Persistence – showed great emotional intelligence in “following up”. Tried to use my previous “decision/choice” to drive action. Compare this with the “just checking in” emails and calls.
Now, I’m not saying that all that he did was above-board or that it should be copied by B2B tech salespeople. But there’re some elements of this process that can be adopted for more effective selling.
In case you’re wondering, he did make the sale.
And no, I’ve no regrets.