“Make sure instead of making assumptions, you’re validating all of those buyer buyers at every stage of your sales process.” – Jack Wilson in today’s Tip 1168
What’s your thought about this?
Join the conversation below and connect with Jack!
Seismic
Sales Rebellion
Jack Wilson on LinkedIn
Jack Wilson on Sales Success Stories interview
Submit a Sales Tip
Have feedback? Want to share a sales tip? Call or text the Sales Success Hotline: 512-777-1442 or Email: [email protected]
Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today Jack Wilson is back and to make my editor’s life easier. Be warned that there’s some colorful language in this one if you didn’t already guess from the title of the tip. Now you’ve got about 10 seconds to skip this if you need to. Here’s Jack:
Jack Wilson: What’s going on Daily Sales Tips Community, Jack Wilson back with another tip. Today I want to talk to you about making umptions and not being an ass. Then I’m going to test Scott and his editor’s ability to probably bleep me out a couple of times.
We’ve all heard the phrase assuming makes an ass out of you and me. But in sales, more times than not, assuming really just makes an ass out of you. And why is that? There’s a couple of reasons. We do a lot of homework and a lot of research on our prospective buyers. A lot of us follow the challenger sales, which says that we have to come in with an insight and challenge our buyers to think in a different way or give them insights that maybe they haven’t considered. Sometimes this can come off like we’re a know-it-all, and that’s one way to look like an ass. But another way that we end up making assumptions is by trusting some of the research and the homework that we do. But if you really go back and you think about all the deals that you’ve worked, how many times is that information accurate or correct versus how many times did you have to learn a nuance or something unique to the specific buyer to change your perspective or understanding of how exactly they get things done?
So when I say make umptions, I just want you to take the ass out of it. I want you to be honest about the fact that you’ve assumed something share that with your buyer. It might sound something as simple as “Hey, I assume that,” and make a statement about some of the homework you’ve done. The nice thing about our buyers is despite the jockeying for position when it comes to sales and negotiating, they don’t like to let the record stand false.
So a lot of times if you make an assumption that’s incorrect, your buyers will correct you. They’ll give you the right information. The next way that we end up making ourselves look like an ass by making assumptions is because the course of action we take after the assumption.
Think about it.
A lot of what we do is based on information. It’s the discovery that we do. It’s the knowledge about our clients and how we solve their problems. Well, if you have a piece of knowledge that then informs your strategy, and that strategy then informs the tactics you’re going to do to move the deal forward and ultimately close it but that was all based on a false premise. All that effort is for not, that’s how you lose deals. That’s how deals take a long time. And yes, that’s how you end up looking like an ass.
So I hope this tip was helpful for you. Make sure instead of making assumptions, you’re validating all of those buyer buyers at every stage of your sales process.
Scott Ingram: For links to connect with Jack and for the colorful transcript of today’s tip. Just click over to DailySales.Tips/1168. Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip, or just keep right on going with your binge. Thanks for listening!