Chief No Officer - Confessions of an Unconventional Entrepreneur

SECTION TWO

So You Think You Know what Selling Is?

Salesman, the Delta Force of Your Business

We’ve Got to Teach Everyone to Sell Like Bobby Does!

What if We Paid People to Pay Attention?

I Don’t Care About Cash! Give Me the TV!

Computers are Made to be Sold

 

ARGUMENTUM AD POPULUM

In logic an argumentum ad populum (Latin for “appeal to the people”) is a fallacious argument that concludes a proposition to be true because many or most people believe it; which alleges: “If many believe so, it is so.”

 

SALESMEN, THE DELTA FORCE OF YOUR BUSINESS

You know what the Delta Force is—the Special Operations troops tasked with impossible rescues. Special Forces are sent to breach defenses and destroy secret weapons. Their special training is grueling. Imagine the skill and courage required to parachute from 30,000 feet—where there is so little oxygen, you would be unconscious in seconds if the wind knocks your mask off—then plunge 29,000 feet, and finally open your chute in the nick of time to land on target. Without a doubt, being a member of an elite military unit requires special strengths that few possess, and many would rather not be witness to. Your sales personnel are your company’s Delta Force.

That is an unconventional perspective on salespeople. Most of the entrepreneurs I’ve worked with have technical backgrounds, and almost universally regard sales people as sub-humans performing an antisocial necessity. Big mistake.

This chapter is not a primer on how to sell. Instead it contains techniques, explanations, and war stories, and what you should take away from it is a perspective you couldn’t otherwise have unless you are a professional salesman. Salesmanship is not taught in business school or any other school. Much of what a professional salesman learns is through self-study and the real world when the phone hangs up, the door shuts, and prospect says no.

Some Sample Techniques

What follow are six selling techniques that I think demonstrate the difficulty of selling. Some sales techniques require that a salesman ignore years of social conditioning, so he can willfully break social convention to win a sale. Other techniques are psychological devices designed to unmask the underlying reasons why a prospect won’t place an order and to encourage communication about those reasons. The purpose of other techniques is to lessen the fear of making a large investment. In the order of presentation, we will explore:

• asking the closing question
• asking the closing question, then shutting up
• responding to “I’ll have to think about it”
• reduction to the absurd
• payback period
• appeal to status

Proficiency at these sales techniques requires hours of training, weeks of practice, and months of attempting to utilize them with real people. These techniques are part of a discipline called transactional selling. The name derives from the transaction of communications in which you, the sales professional, precisely guide the prospect toward an order. As you read the techniques, ask yourself if you could execute them while appearing natural and spontaneous. Could you accomplish them at all? You’ll find that some of the techniques can prove useful in day-to-day negotiations. Try them out!

Ask the Closing Question

Your first and most important lesson in selling is that every real salesman is always closing. To close in the context of selling means “to ask for the order.” Every professional salesman is asking for the order at every opportunity and at any stage in the sale because prospects decide to purchase when they make the decision, not according to your schedule. The only way to measure a prospect’s willingness to place an order is to ask for the order.

“Asking the closing question” is exactly what your mother taught you not to do. Since early childhood she said, “Asking for things is impolite. Wait until they are offered. And never ask for anything a second time because that makes the other person feel uncomfortable.” You knew that if you persisted in your asking and annoyed powerful people like teachers, they might send you to detention.

Sales professionals have to unlearn mother’s lesson. Fighting against ingrained behavior, they must constantly ask and ask again for what they want.

Asking the closing question terrifies most people. If you doubt that, I’d like to know how fearless you were the last time you wanted to introduce yourself to someone and ask for a date. Not the same, you say? Well, you’re wrong. It is so much the same, one of the ways to train sales professionals is to take them out in public, make them introduce themselves to people and ask for dates. Both requests result in many rejections. Rejection is frightening! Asking for an order is no less difficult.

Most people cannot handle rejection, so they avoid situations that might result in it. But sales professionals are trained to be tough and to take rejection, like a Special Forces operative can take a punishing blow. Expect it and keep on fighting. Could you do that? Could you cope with hours, days, and weeks of repeated rejection but keep trying? You will have to if you want a career in sales.

After You Ask the Closing Question, Shut Up!

“After asking the closing question, he who speaks first loses.” I first heard those words in 1981, on a Tom Hopkins training tape. What does it mean, “He who speaks first loses”?

Before I answer that and go on to explain the technique, let’s look at some “normal” social interaction between you and me. It illustrates our social conditioning.

“Do you like Chinese food?” you ask me. “ Want to stop by Cheng Du after work?”

I don’t answer for a moment. I am troubled. How do I tell you I’d rather not have Chinese food?

Sensing my reluctance, you fill the gap. “It’s OK,” you say. “We don’t have to go there. We could go somewhere else. Do you like Italian?”

I smile, and you look greatly relieved. “That would be great. Let’s go!”

The next time you are in a conversation or overhear a conversation, pay close attention to how questioners quickly fill in the gap if the other person does not answer right away. Breaking the silence is a social convention we use to relieve anxiety in others. We want to relieve the anxiety we created. If we don’t get a quick response to a question, we are likely to pose alternative questions or dismiss our original question as unimportant.

Now I have an experiment for you. The next time you ask a question and get silence instead of a response, don’t say anything. Keep your facial expression neutral and wait. If you can see a clock with a second hand on it, take note of the number of seconds that elapse. Those will be the longest seconds of your life. If you can remain silent until the other person talks, you are one tough cookie! We train prospective salesmen to perform this difficult-to-learn technique. It is second only in difficulty to asking the closing question in the first place.

What is meant by “he who speaks first loses,” is simply that the person who speaks first and closes the gap loses control of the conversation. If you break the silence you yourself have created, you are responding to the perceived anxiety of the person you questioned. But they have said nothing. The prospect has refused to answer your question. When you speak to fill the gap, you are attempting to relieve anxiety. You have lost control of the conversation. If you are a salesman and relinquish control of the conversation, you are not controlling the prospect as you should; you’re not moving them toward a sale.

Not every closing question results in an order. Prospects say no many times before yes, and some never say yes. The professional salesman understands that if he can keep his mouth shut until the prospect speaks, he establishes control and nonverbally communicates that he is going to ask for what he wants when he wants to and will wait for an answer. There will be no easy gap-filling provided by the salesman.

Also, the salesman gathers information as soon as the prospect speaks. Even if the answer is no, it is never just no. Accompanying the refusal will be lots of other words that try to justify the negative answer. Those other words are clues to the prospect’s needs, fears, and objections—exactly the information the salesman needs to do his job.

Winning by Closing and Waiting

Can a salesman be a huge success by mastering only two techniques? The answer is yes. I saw it happen. In 1982 IBM introduced the personal computer. Hot on IBM’s heels came a clone maker, the first, Columbia Data. Columbia Data shot from nothing to $50 million in sales in less than one year. My company, Access Computer Systems, was part of that success; my salesmen Dave and Jim were the motive power.

This is Jim’s story: he came to Access right out of business school, with no sales experience. We hired him first for technical support, but when Access Computer Systems landed the Columbia Data distributorship, he...