“So what you want to do is take the position, blow it up, and then bring it back to something that you think is reasonable and that you both can agree on.” – Jason Cahill in today’s Tip 323
How about you? What’s your sales inception?
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Jason Cahill on LinkedIn
Ceridian
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today Jason Cahill is back with another tip. Jason works in Commercial Sales at Ceridian and is responsible for their South Western Ontario territory in Canada. This is pretty interesting stuff, give a listen:
Jason Cahill: Hey Scott, Jay here. I thought I’d share it with another tip with you. That’s more of an advanced sales tactic and I like to call Sales Inception. In this method, if you really want something, you actually kind of push it to the extreme. Some people call this reverse psychology. I just called it Inception Sales because that’s what I’m doing is it’s suggesting that it’s not my idea. It’s actually their idea, even though it is mine. This often works on a lot of type and driver personas. And I’ll give you an example of how this works.
So for example, in sales, we’re always trying to tie the customer back to a timeline to close the deal or get a next meeting or whatever. So the traditional salesperson would ask, you know, when can we move forward on this? When’s our next meeting? And we know that if we’re polite and ask for the meeting, our customers will likely say, “Yeah, well, you know, I’ll let you know I gotta talk to somebody else or whatever. I’ll let you know.” So they’ve got the ball essentially. And basically you’re done in the sales cycle. You don’t have any control over any left. But if you said instead “You’re not in a rush or anything, are you? I mean, we have some time.” The client usually will answer pretty honestly and a lot of times they’ll actually say “Yeah, you know what, we’re not in a rush.” And you can suggest like,” Hey, okay, well let’s book something out like two or three months later or something.” They might say, “Great, that works for me.” And then now you have at least they have a timeline and a date. And obviously you don’t want to do it three months later. Yeah, time kills deals. But you might want to put it to the extreme. If you have a really good feeling that you know, Hey, there they are in kind of a rush, but you want to take that power position back, but give them a window to get it back. And the only other option is faster than two months. So if you said, “Hey, you’re not in a rush or anything, we’ve got some time, let’s book the next meeting.” If they said, “Yeah, well no, we’re good. You know, I’ll let you know” and say, “Great, well let’s book something out. You know, two months anyway, and then we can kinda catch up and we’ll move to the next stage. “Sometimes the customer will say, “No, no, no, no, no. We need to actually move faster than that, Can’t do two months.” And so the other option is, okay, well let’s figure out a date faster than two months. Now you’re back in the power position. So in pricing, it’s called anchoring high. When you suggest a higher price, the customer asks for a discount. After several theatrics, you settle for a lower price. And what you could have raised the higher raised, higher than the normal price anyway. I’m not saying you should do that, but you know, a lot of people do. So next time you’re negotiating or anything that you need, suggest the extreme kind of blow-up that extreme. So you know, “Hey, you want to move faster in the next month?” “ No, no, we’re good.” “Okay, great. Well, I don’t really have time until like three months out. So let’s book something that.” “ No, no, no, no. We need to do something faster.” “Okay.” Well, now you’re back. You’ve got the power position. Okay, You want them to buy the more expensive package, suggest the really cheap one. For some reason, they kind of want to be gained that upper hand over a salesperson in terms of prospects. So if you want them to buy the red one, so just the green one. No, I like green anyway. But basically it comes down to my mantra, which is if communication is anticipated, it’s automatically discounted. So what you want to do is take the position, blow it up, and then bring it back to something that you think is reasonable and that you both can agree on. Don’t give up your power position by asking too much suggest
Scott Ingram: To learn more about Jason just click over to DailySales.Tips/323, and if you want to be like Jason and like Andrew yesterday, because you regularly listen to these tips, but want to give back to the community and contribute your own tip. Just look for the Submit a Sales Tip link at the top of the page.
Then after you’ve sent me your tip. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!