This is a special post by guest blogger Kevin Rains owner of Center City Collision in Cincinnati, Ohio and founder of Body Shop 2.0 (bodyshopmarketingplan.com)
People want to be heard. Really heard and really understood. It’s also true that to fix a problem you have to learn; however, learning requires listening as the price of admission.
As a small business owner, I cannot tell you how many times I have had a salesperson come into my office and convince me of the need to buy. I was hooked. I just had a few questions for them and I was ready to open up my checkbook – sometimes to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. But they could not pick up on the cues that it was my turn to talk or that I had a question. They wanted to finish their speech, pull every sales trick out of their grab bag and make sure I had ‘all the information I needed to make an informed decision.’ Well guess what? I had already made a decision to buy and the more they talked the less interested I became. Why? Because in that moment I realized that this was all about them. If they were offering me something of value it should have been about me, right? I mean I had mentally already stroked the check. I was right where they wanted me, but… they kept talking, and talking, and talking. So they lost the sale as they literally talked me out of it, by making the sale all about themselves…
To be continued!