“Sell me this pen.”
When given this classic sales test, 90% of amateurs will start talking about the pen.
“This pen here has blue ink and the grip feels like this and it’s better than other pens because …”
This isn’t sales. It’s lecturing, and the client is likely already bored of your voice. When you’re selling anything, the best strategy is to get the client talking as soon as possible, ideally about themselves or something else they care about.
“Tell me more about why you’re in the market for a pen.”
“Do you use pens more for note taking or document signing?”
“What other pens have you been looking at?”
“What do you know about this pen?”
A big misconception about sales is that it has anything at all to do with explaining or otherwise talking about your product, your service, yourself, or whatever else you’re selling. A successful salesperson, instead of making statements, knows to ask questions.
If you ask the right questions, you’ll find the client can even give you the whole pitch on your product, in their own words. They’ll even tell you what price they’ll pay when you innocently ask, “For a product that can relieve that pain point for you, what’s your budget?”
As far as asking the right questions, sometimes you’ll ask the wrong ones. That’s okay. Just say, “Interesting,” nonchalantly. Then ask another question, and when they give you the right answer, “That’s exactly right!” Get excited, drop an emotional landmark right there to let them know they’ve made a point—something that you can recall together at the end of the pitch right before you ask for the sale or when you’re handling objections.
In sales encounters, ask more questions. Let the client do the talking. It’s about them, not you.