“Always remember to help them feel safe. And when you do, they will follow your lead.” – Jason Cutter in today’s Tip 594
How about you? Do you know your prospect’s greatest fear?
Join the conversation below and learn more about Jason!
Jason Cutter Website
Cutter Consulting Group
Authentic Persuasion
Selling with Authentic Persuasion Book
Cutter Consulting Group Podcast
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Jason Cutter. Jason is the CEO and Founder of Cutter Consulting Group and he’s also the author of the brand new book: Selling with Authentic Persuasion – Transforming from Order Taker to Quota Breaker. Here he is:
Jason Cutter: Your prospects are afraid. Heck everyone is afraid of something. Heights, sharks, public speaking, clowns, something. But your prospects all have one fear in common and it’s the fear of change. In the B2B space, the most dominant fear outside of that is the fear of making a mistake or looking bad. And they don’t want to agree to buy your product or your service and have it fail and then that reflects poorly on them. So fundamentally you gotta remember the primitive part of our brains does not like change. Why? Well, change equals death. Now, of course, it’s not really that dramatic anymore.
You pick a new Chinese restaurant to go to, and most likely you won’t die of embarrassment or bad choices, but there’s people who literally won’t go outside their own comfort zone to venture to new restaurants, travel to new places, explore new cities. Their comfort zone is so strong they stay in their bubble.
Evolutionarily picking a new berry could cause us to get sick and die. So it totally makes sense at that part in our brain at least 5 – 10,000 years ago, but not so much anymore. So always remember your prospects are afraid of change. Now, what can you do about it?
First, understand that it’s likely to be their largest fear that they have. So you’ve got to know that you’ve got to go into the conversations into your approach, knowing, and remembering and keeping that top of mind that they are afraid of change.
Second. And I believe in brutal upfront honesty. So let’s call it like it is. When not if your prospect starts to wiggle and doubt, moving forward with you, bring up the fear discussion, just be open and honest. They’re not going to expect it most salespeople who are either lack confidence or are going to try to use manipulation. They’re not going to call it like it is. So this will set you apart, but say something like, “Hey John, I totally understand that you want to do some research. I’ve been doing this for a long time. And in my experience, most people are worried about making a change in potentially making the wrong decision and looking bad. It’s why most people don’t even like to try new restaurants. And this of course is a much bigger decision than that. My goal is to help you feel comfortable with how our product will help you do X. And I want to make sure that once we move forward, you know it’s the right decision and you don’t have to worry about it.” So use some language like that when they give you the, I need to think about it. I need to research, send me more information, use something along those lines to call it what it is that most likely they’re just afraid. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It just means you’ve got to help them feel safe.
Which me into the next part. Third, make them feel safe. Safe is an acronym for successful. At fear elimination. Your goal is to help them feel as safe as possible in buying from you in the same way that they are deciding to try to buy a brand new brand of paper towels, right? Give them a lot of emotional assurances, as well as business assurances, guarantees, money back stuff, how much you support them, how much is involved on the backend once they become a customer. And then of course, offer testimonials case studies, social proof. I don’t always throw a lot of social proof at people. It’s usually just when I can tell that they’re scared or they’re going down that path. So be careful because a lot of times if you throw out a lot of those things, it makes you sound desperate and worried, and that will actually trigger them to be more scared and be in more fear if you offer too much of the guarantees and assurances, cause then it’s like, wait a second. Why are you having to do this and give me so many assurances? It’s so crazy how much that can backfire on you.
And then fourth use the old feel felt found. I mean, most people are familiar with this, but it works really well, especially when dealing with fear. And so you might say something like this, “Hey, John, I’m guessing that you might be feeling hesitant if this is the right decision. Worried about this being the best decision for you, for your company and for your current situation. Based on what you told me regarding your goals we both know that this is the ideal situation for your company. I worked with a marketing manager last week who felt the same way. And what they found was that when we went through some testimonials and case studies from our clients, they were excited and ready to move forward. This is a great conversation to use and scripting to use so that you can then transition because they just told you to send more information. You use something like this, and then you pull from them what information they want. Hopefully, you can continue the conversation without defaulting to kind of an email rush off that they’re trying to give you.” So always remember to help them feel safe. And when you do, they will follow your lead.
Scott Ingram: For more about Jason and for a link to buy his new book: Selling with Authentic Persuasion, just click over to DailySales.Tips/594
Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!
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