Questions about Persuasion....

Why?

Well why do you think? Think about that for just a minute ... I think because if you have the opposite to rapport which is coldness or unfriendlyness it is going to be very difficult to sell someone anything

Quote:
Originally Posted by Jorel
I also mentioned rapport because I believe studies have taken rapport so much further than what DC has done and that if you have good enough rapport you do not need anything else.

How is that possible? Wouldn't the product being the right solution be more important?

You ask some interesting questions. But let me ask you this. How do you know what the right product is? Is it the product that the customer thinks he wants? Is is the product you are selling? Is it the cheapest product or the product that is the best value.

In any case, I hope you believe you have the best product available to your client. But even if you do and you do not develop rapport with your client he may or may not buy from you. He may choose to buy from your competitor because he had better rapport with this particular customer.

What line of sales teachings, Dale Carnegie?

Any line of sales teaching that does not benifit the client.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jorel

Why?

Well why do you think? Think about that for just a minute ... I think because if you have the opposite to rapport which is coldness or unfriendlyness it is going to be very difficult to sell someone anything

You know more about this than I do but I don't think you are in rapport or you are cold or unfriendly. That sounds extreme.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jorel

You ask some interesting questions. But let me ask you this. How do you know what the right product is? Is it the product that the customer thinks he wants? Is is the product you are selling? Is it the cheapest product or the product that is the best value.

I think the right product is the product the customers say is right for them. It looked like you were saying that if you have good enough rapport you do not need anything else.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jorel

What line of sales teachings, Dale Carnegie?

Any line of sales teaching that does not benifit the client.

What Dale Carnegie books is everyone talking about?

You know more about this than I do but I don't think you are in rapport or you are cold or unfriendly. That sounds extreme.

I put in an extreme example to make a point, but let me try an analogy instead. Suppose a salesman is selling furniture. He does not have good rapport or bad rapport. All he does is show the customer what they ask for, a chair. The customer sits in the chair, likes it but decides it is best to look at other options.

Goes next door to another furniture store. Where this sales man asks why he is buying a chair now. Customer says to watch the superbowl game. Salesman says oh really what team do you want to win. Chicago. Me too, I grew up in Chicago on the south side. Do you need this chair delivered. Oh no I have a truck. But your chair costs more than the same chair next door. Tell you what, for a fellow Bears fan I will take ten bucks off, how does that sound. Great the customer buys the chair. Whithout a second thought of the other salesperson who probally would have went down even lower but because he built no rapport the customer did not bother to go back and ask him because he did not want to say no to a fellow Bears fan.

I think the right product is the product the customers say is right for them. It looked like you were saying that if you have good enough rapport you do not need anything else.

In most cases the salesperson should be the expert on the product not the customer. After all a customer is buying one, the salesperson is selling many. So because a customer says I want widget A because it is cheaper. You can tell him, I understand you want widget A because it is cheaper. You want to save the most amount of money. And when you buy widget B it can do everything widget A plus it comes with this other features that widget A does not. Now do you want to save a few dollars or are you worth the extra features that widget B has.

Now somepeople have no use for those features and sell them widget A, but alot of the time people prefer value over price and if you can show them a better value that is what they really want, they just always do not know it at first.

What Dale Carnegie books is everyone talking about?

How to Win Friends and Influence People first written in 1936. I think this book has some very good points, but I also think people have evolved a little since 1936 so must sales techiniques.

Principle 5 get the othe person to say yes, yes imediately.

For example

"Spell SPOT three times."
"S P O T , S P O T , S P O T"
"What do you do when you come to a green light?"
(answer is invariably-) "Stop!"
"What, at a GREEN light?"

I believe a lot of people have caught onto this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thomas

It looked like you were saying that if you have good enough rapport you do not need anything else.

I got the same impression Jorel. Can you cover this a little more? Thank you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Slick

I got the same impression Jorel. Can you cover this a little more? Thank you.

When you say "this", what do you mean specifically? I don't want to go off on a tangent to is irrelevant.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jorel

I think the right product is the product the customers say is right for them. It looked like you were saying that if you have good enough rapport you do not need anything else.

Now somepeople have no use for those features and sell them widget A, but alot of the time people prefer value over price and if you can show them a better value that is what they really want, they just always do not know it at first.

Some people do prefer value over price but how does that work with if you have good enough rapport you don't need anything else?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jorel

What Dale Carnegie books is everyone talking about?

Principle 5 get the othe person to say yes, yes imediately.

For example

"Spell SPOT three times."
"S P O T , S P O T , S P O T"
"What do you do when you come to a green light?"
(answer is invariably-) "Stop!"
"What, at a GREEN light?"

I believe a lot of people have caught onto this.

I read that book and kind of remember the technique and that wasn't how it was explained. I remember it saying the idea was getting people in a receptive mindset not tricking them like in your example.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jorel

When you say "this", what do you mean specifically? I don't want to go off on a tangent to is irrelevant.

I meant the text in red, "if you have good enough rapport you do not need anything else."

Using your example of a salesman selling furniture imagine that after the $10 discount the price of the chair was still 50% higher than what the customer would have paid with the first salesman. Do you believe the customer would have still bought because of "rapport"? What if the difference was 40%, 30%, 20%. At what price do you need more than "rapport"?

I wish I could answer your question but I prefer to be honest and tell you I do not know. I am believe you would rather have an honest answer than an answer you can not rely on.

But think of it this way as far as percentages. Many would probally pay at least $2 for a candybar from someone they know, like a child. Even though they know they can get that same candybar at the store for less than $1.

In the end, I believe it is going to depend on three things.
First how bad the customer really wants a product or service.
Second how much in rapport the salesperson has with the customer.
Third is price difference, if you are comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges.

This is probally something you already knew, I just wanted to point out while I may have some answers, I can assure you I do not have them all. But everyday I work to gain more answers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by harmlessdot

wrote in part:
"Why is that every time I speak to a sales person they have advice for me, advice like give them two choices, be yourself, just sell the client man. Its like there's some kind of secret code to selling that they themselves are unable to decipher.

This surely sounds cynical but all of the sales training that I've gone through all have the same Dale Carnegie stuff rehashed and served up on a different plate!!!"

I promise that you will not find any Dale Carnegie like stuff in High Probability Selling (HPS). That is because HPS is based on research into how the Top 1% of salespeople actually sell. These people typically earn over $1 million per year.

Ironically, they cannot say how they do it, because they don't know; they just do it intuitively.

We learned what they do by observing 312 of the top salespeople in 23 different industries, while they were working.

Questions about Persuasion....

Persuasion and Influence Forum