Yesterday on behalf of a client who owns a dog obedience school, I called and mystery shopped their sales guy.
to give you a bit of background, they have a great brand and get a steady flow of leads, and
the sales guy is paid a success fee for each client that books a consultation.
Here’s what I discovered…
They called me back within 8 minutes of my enquiry (good start as you are 9x more likely to convert a
lead if you cake them back within 5 minutes of the enquiry)
The guy then asked me 3 questions about my situation and them launched head long into a detailed
description of the service that they offer.
I timed him and for 6 minutes straight he just dumped product knowledge on me and described all the
features of the service that they offer.
I was silent the whole time and he didn’t even check to see if I was still there !
Granted he was good at doing that, he articulated what they did in a very professional and clear way
and it was clear that he cared and was enthusiastic about what he did.
But here’s where he went wrong…
He didn’t ask nearly enough questions before he started on the solution (I call it Premature Elaboration)
He didn’t go deep to discover the impact of the problem that I was having
He didn’t establish any urgency
He asked no check questions to see if what he was saying made any sense to me as he went through
his product spell.
Then when it came to telling me about their fee he said “oh we haven’t talked about cost” which
is a no no because cost is a psycho phobic word that triggers an unconscious fear response in buyers
And then his attempt to get me to commit was…
“so do you want to think about it or do you want to book in?“
So if the intention is to get commitment in this call, the first part of that sentence is clearly not the
best thing to say there – giving me an option to “think about it” is not likely to end well
Then when I said “yeah I think I’ll think about” he said would you like me to send you an email with some
more information.
Now, as I said this guy was articulate, had personality and I could tell he genuinely cared, but this guy
is losing the business hundreds of thousands of dollars, plus they have no follow up system for the leads that
don’t convert which means that by not having this solved, they are leaving MASSIVE amounts of money on the table
So what can we learn from what he could have done better…?
1.Use the 70/30 rule
Structure your sales process so that they talk first and they are talking for 70% of the time and you are
taking for only 30% of the time. If they are doing most of the talking and if you are asking most of the questions,
they will be in effectively selling themselves. If you are doing most of the talking, you can
2.Ask more questions
The ability to ask well thought out well structured questions is the most undervalued skill and under utilised
tool to selling. When you ask questions you magnetise your client to you and your solution. If you fail
to do this well, you will lose sales.
3.When you ask for the sale, be assumptive.
Look, by virtue of the fact that they have invested the time to spend with you on the phone or face to face
and if you truly believe that you can help them, plus they have established that they have a problem that
they know you can solve, there is every reason to assume they should want to go ahead.
In this case, I would have suggested this guy simply making the appointment by saying “would you prefer
to book a time this week or would next week work better for you?” Then once the appointment is booked
they are in – job done
If you would like to have a serious conversation about how you can increase your sales conversions by
up to 40%, simply click on this link.
Please only apply if you are serious about making an investment in your business to create predictable
sustainable sales results.
