I know it’s obvious but…
Sometimes things we do as salespeople and coaches are just so obvious we forget to give a reason why, this can be perilous as I’ll explain…
9 hours flying. Delhi International to London Heathrow. Thank goodness it was a night flight so we could sleep most of the way and the plane was very comfortable with some attentive stewards.
I haven’t flown long haul for ages, and I was bemused by all the rules and regulations. Do’s and don’ts. You have to wear your seatbelt at all times and tuck your blanket underneath, your seat must be in an upright position for take off, you must switch off your MP3 player on takeoff. You can’t have items on the floor.
The stewards, naturally, know the rules and have flown thousands of hours, I’d only done a few. They knew all the regulations and constantly reminded us, almost to the point of nagging. Which they didn’t enjoy. Until one steward came over to me and said I couldn’t have my shoes on the floor….because if we had a problem, maybe some turbulence, they would fly off and hurt someone. Now that never occurred to me, I just thought they were nagging on that regulation, but after she explained why, it made sense.
And that made all the difference to me, I realised why.
So when you’re selling, do you tell your customer why you’re doing something.
- If you have a factfind do you relate the benefits to them of filling it in?
- If you have to do some form of disclosure at the outset, do you explain why?
- If there’s a form to complete, do you say what the benefit is?
- If there’s a next step, do you explain why?
- If you ask them a really tough question, do you explain why you’re asking?
It’s very easy to think it’s obvious, but not to your customer. I didn’t know why leaving my shoes on the floor was dangerous, to me it wasn’t obvious, to the steward it was.
And at the press of a button my seat converted to a bed and within minutes I was in 30,000 feet dreamland, 7 hours later I was awaken with an English breakfast, how cool is that.
