Sales Training Series #19

Insights from recent trainings

Welcome back to another Sales Training series!

These posts are intended to give you access to some of the golden nuggets I give clients during our training sessions.

Note: I intentionally keep the descriptions of my clients vague for privacy reasons.

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What we’re covering in this post:

- The one phrase that gets every salesperson in trouble after a prospect requests a proposal and 3 rebuttals for handling this scenario

- 4 stage funnel for dealing with a “Just Curious” prospect in a meeting

- How to spend less time demonstrating your product live without compromising performance & buyer experience

- How to ask the buyer the question you *really* want to ask.. without pissing them off

- 3 steps to breaking out of the Commodity Frame in a technical sale

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The one phrase that gets every salesperson in trouble

2 common themes I see in most sales training material:

1. Overcomplication

2. Oversimplification

Overcomplication = Treating sales & selling to be more complicated than it really is.

and Oversimplification = Strategies & Tactics that are too “limited in scope” (fail to address the Frame, fail to solve their real sales problem)

Some examples..

Buyer: Your price is too high

🤡: Compared to what?

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Buyer: Can you send us a proposal?

🤡: I can, but can you first tell me why you need one?

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Buyer: This isn’t a priority right now

🤡: Why is it not a priority?

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Good sales strategy, generally, should be focused on 2 things:

1. Finding the Truth

2. Showing the buyer how to buy from you

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Now there was one rebuttal that really stood out to me because it is such a subtle mistake that most sellers make / have made (including myself!)

It looks like this:

Buyer: Can you send us a proposal?

🤡: I can, but can you first tell me why you need one?

The Problem

“I can, but” (and all variations of this phrase) is an implicit agreement & acceptance of the Buyers Frame.

Their Frame, when accepted, becomes the new “Rules” of the interaction.

Then when you follow up up with “But”, this negates the “new rules” causing a lot of unnecessary tension.

To visualize the idea:

You can’t really win here because you’re still operating in their Frame.. and trying to negate the Frame while operating inside of it shows you are openly resisting it which can be considered “aggressive”

Remember.. Frames don’t play nice. It’s a zero sum game.

This “tension” causes the buyer to double down on their original position (wanting a proposal) making it much harder to get them off of that idea because they see you resisting.

All of this happens because you said “I can, but”

“I can, but…” sends conflicting messages to the buyer both overtly and covertly.

I can = Accepting their Frame and request

But = Taking away their request (creating annoyance because you had just agreed to it without realizing!)

It is confusing and off putting.

Not just in sales by the way… any time someone gives you a suggestion of what you “should” do or tries to tell you what to do, prefacing your response with: “I can, but…” makes you appear indecisive and compels the other side to try to convince you because they’ve sensed you agree with them and you just need more convincing. You then leave the interaction feeling worse than you did and probably arguing internally with yourself about an idea that wasn’t even yours to begin with. NGMI.

The Solution

You can acknowledge their Frame without accepting it.

In fact, just by responding you are acknowledging it.

No need to add the typical “sales speak” i.e

“I can…”

“I’d be open to that but before…”

“I can do that…”

Best not accept their Frame at all.

Just reframe the conversation entirely: