Do you want to know why your prospects aren’t buying from you? There are three R’s or three things you need to understand if people walk out that door and don’t purchase from you. Most people are wearing a badge that says convince me, help me make a good decision. They need and want help. They want to be confident in making the right choice. That is what a great persuader does.
The first R is reason. You didn’t give them a reason to buy. Maybe you didn’t generate enough interest. Or there wasn’t a need, a want, or a desire from your prospect. Your prospect has their own reason to buy. And you see this with rookie salesmen. The rookie gives them a laundry list of reasons to buy the product. This sucks the energy out of your prospect, loses the emotion of the sale and usually uncovers one reason not to buy. You must always find the one or two main reasons why they want to buy.
This reminds me of a story of tapping into someone’s reason to buy. Airman Jones was assigned to the induction center, where he advised new recruits about their government benefits, especially their GI insurance.
It wasn’t long before Captain Smith noticed that Airman Jones was having a staggeringly high success-rate, selling insurance to nearly 100% of the recruits he advised. Rather than asking him about this, the Captain stood at the back of the room and listened to Jones’ sales pitch. Jones explained the basics of GI Insurance to the new recruits, and then said, “If you are killed in a battle and have a GI Insurance, the government has to pay $200,000 to your beneficiaries. But, if you don’t have a GI insurance and get killed in the battle, the government only has to pay a maximum of $6000.” “Now,” he concluded, “which group do YOU think they are going to send into battle first?”
REASON
Interest
Need
Want
The second R is resources. Maybe they didn’t have the time for your product. Maybe they didn’t have the money; maybe they didn’t have the support. Support could be from a spouse, a peer group of friends that if they brought your product or service home that they would not support him. The last aspect under resources is ability. Maybe they can’t even use your product. If you’re trying to sell an annual ski pass to a rest home, they might not have the ability to use it.
RESOURCES
Time
Money
Support
Ability
The third R is the rep. That’s you as a person. Did you not develop a trust? Did you not create rapport? Did you have the wrong type of style? Were they analytical, were they social? You could have used the wrong type of motivation. Or it could be what I call persuasion pitfall. Where you pushed a little to far or you said something where they felt like they were getting trapped into a corner. And this is the pitfall. And I know this has happened to you.
You go into a store and someone says the wrong thing or they push a little to far and it just doesn’t feel right and you leave and never go back to that store. And that’s what could be happening to you if you’re hitting the wrong buttons. So take a look at those three things, which are critical to understand why your prospects don’t buy.
REP
Trust
Rapport
Style
Pitfall
APPLICATION QUESTIONS
What is the greatest reason people should buy your product/service?
When someone says your product is too expensive. What is your response?
When you have a conflicting style with a customer, what can you do?