Okay, you’re on the phone or face to face with a great prospect. How would you grade yourself on learning what the real problem is? How do you know? The Devine assessment gives us all a good indicator of how competent we are with this skill. So, if you have it, go to page 5 and check your score from 1-99. If you have not taken one or care to retake, please contact our office (for a fee) so we can have you assessed. Now turn to page 6 or 7 depending how you scored and you’ll notice there are 7 behaviors that comprise reading the situation. They are:
- Emotional Composure
- Listening
- Learning
- Detail Orientation
- Initiative
- Creativeness
- Decisiveness.
You will have a score from 0-9. Interestingly enough scores of 6, 7 and 8 are the target zone. Refer to pages 9-11 to locate your scores.
So what does this mean? The higher the score means my ability to find out what the real problem my customer has. Remember the Sandler Rule: The problem the prospect tells you is never the real problem. As a Sandler advocate, we know what we need to do. I not only need to find out what the real problems are, but through my knowledge and skill I’m able to work the pain funnel effectively and really listen to the reasons behind the problems and the impact of the problems. Why? Simple, we help the prospect discover if the consequences of not changing won’t affect them, we go for no. If the consequences have a huge impact (positive or negative) they discover their reasons for wanting to change and buy for their own reasons not yours. Makes post selling a lot easier too.
Go back and take a look. Really analyze how you’re structuring your conversations. Do you need to make changes?
Good selling,
Jim Dunn
Sandler Trainer
