Being married for almost 20 years means my wife understands me, totally. And she loves it when I’ve done something wrong and she has this ability to make me squirm for my utter wrongness. She simply asks me what have I done wrong, and goes quiet on me.
The clever part is that she doesn’t have to say anything now, she just looks at me and I just have to say something, and then something again, then she looks at me again, and I say some more.
Each time I say some more, I get myself deeper and deeper into my supposed wrongness and my wife just carries on looking at me in that “you’ve been naughty kind of way”
Now, many of you may be able to relate to this treatment and it’s not life threatening or damaging and can be fun after the event when you look back. And boy, do I feel guilty afterwards.
It does though, remind me of selling protection plans to customers. You see, the real secret is self discovery, unless your customers realise themselves they need protection in the event of something life changing happening to them, they wont be motivated to buy it. And the best way is to imitate the way my wife makes me squirm.
Ask them what might happen if…die, ill, house fire…and then just give them that stare. Let them think it through, see the implications, the disasters for their family, the repercussions. Only when they can really see it, visualise it…will they realise they need some protection.
The secret is to not say much, listen, nod, probe a little, ask them to expand on that, tell you more, use assertions such as “really”, “gosh”, sound genuinely interested, have a big rapport…pretty much what Claire does to me when I’ve done something wrong.
Which, by the way, is not very often, I just remember the times so intimately.
