“The only way on earth to influence the other fellow is to talk about what he wants and show him how to get it” - Dale Carnegie

Zig Ziglar and Mary Kay Ashe would have said, “The only way to get what you want is to help enough other people get what they want”.

You’ve probably heard both of those quotes on more than one occasion.  So why aren’t you taking that advice and running with it?

Well, if you’re like most people you just don’t “get it”.  You’re thinking if you want to sell you have to tell other people about your stuff.  And that’s true.  However, it’s the way you approach it that makes the difference.

You see you can either open the door and open the connection by starting with what you have to offer.  Or you can start with what the other person is already looking for.  One way get’s you invited in the other gets the door shut in your face.  But you already knew that didn’t you…

You’re good and darned tired of doors slamming in your face and phones slammed in your ear.  So rather than starting the conversation about what you have to offer change it to what the other person is looking for.

I know most of you are afraid you’ll get it wrong.

You’re afraid if you don’t say the very thing they’re looking for the door will slam shut.  So you can’t help yourself.  You speak in terms of generalities because you don’t want to exclude anyone.  But generalities:

• are meaningless
• lack emotion
• are boring

So you aren’t any better off than you were when you opened the conversation talking about your stuff.  However, you’re missing an important link here in your understanding.

We could make Dale Carnegie’s quote a little easier to understand if we would alter it to read, “get him to talk about what he wants”.  Yes, that’s the big secret.  If you want to sell you have to get the other guy to do most of the talking - not you.

Do you know why introverts are more likely to be top sellers than their fast talking extrovert peers?  Because they know when to shut up and how to listen.  So let’s see how you make that work.

First, we’ve got to get the other guy to talk about what he wants.  How do you find out the things you want to know?  I’ll be you ask a question, don’t you?  If you opened with a question wouldn’t it be easier to find out what the other person is looking for?

So let’s say he tells you he’s looking for a way to get his sales people to get off their butts and get out there and sell something (yipes, this guy must be talking to your sales manager).  Wouldn’t you want to know what he’s looked into in the past to get his salespeople selling?

What if you asked?

You might wonder if he’d already tried some of those things.  You might wonder what he liked most about the things he tried and what he liked least.

Now if this guy is actually going to spend his money, getting sales has to be more important than the cost of buying the solution.  So… why not ask?

Now anytime I’ve spent money I always wanted to know what I was going to get from my investment.  So how will this guy know if his sales were better after the solution than before?

So maybe your sales success depends more on the questions you ask than what you say?

So maybe if you listened to what this guy says and helped him come to his own conclusions… when you did speak you could hit on the things that he’s already told you he’d base his buying decision on?

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