What would it mean to you if you were to pick up a skill that enabled you to quickly build rapport and credibility with your customers and help you earn more of their trust? Would it be worth a little bit of effort and time to master it? And how excited would you be if you could start using this skill with your very next customer?
Then pay close attention to this communication skill: “Defining Terms”.
The average salesperson, especially those of us with experience, tend to assume we know what our customers mean when they use terms like, “good value, high performance, very safe, fully loaded, too high, not enough, sexy, cheap, reliable”, etc. Because we’ve heard these terms before, and because we’ve had some success dealing with these terms in the past, most of us simply launch into time proven word tracks or strategies confident that we’ll get the same good results.
And when we don’t, we’re left scratching our heads in confusion. We end up saying to ourselves (or our managers), “But I showed them all of the safety features!”, if our customers mentioned “safety” or “This thing couldn’t have another option added to it!”, if our customers mentioned “fully loaded”.
What we neglected to do was find out how our customers defined the term “safety”. We never took the time to find out what they meant by “fully loaded”. And it’s something very easy to do. Until we take the time to define our customer’s terms, each time we use the words “safety” or “fully loaded” we just sound like a salesperson trying to make a sale.
I’d like you to do this today. I’d like you to add these few questions to your toolbox right now and use them when you’re performing your investigation or trying to determine your customer’s needs. Take the time to personalize them, of course. Here they are:
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