The Real F-Word in Sales.

At The Harris Consulting Group, we have been using this theory and teaching to clients' inside and outside sales teams for the better part of a year now. And while our evidence is anecdotal, it's definitely worth sharing based on our own success and the success the other inside sales teams we teach.

Everything in life is about a feeling. For some of us, this resonates deeply that we will say, "Yes, hallelujah" for others it will resonate even deeper and we will reject the concept at the surface level. This rejection actually proves the point. Behind rejection are emotions and feelings, often nervousness, anxiety, anger, and even hate.

But instead of becoming an armchair psychologist, let's talk about feelings at it relates to sales.

ASKING FOR THE MEETING

Any time you ask someone for a meeting, in order for them to agree, they MUST FEEL it will be worth their time. This means you've had to establish value, reinforced the value in such a way that prospect FEELS it is in their best interest to devote more time to the discussion.

So here are a few ways I would suggest asking:

1. "So, based on our conversation, how would you feel about having another discussion?"
2. "How does next Tuesday at 1pm feel?"
3. "Who else do you feel could benefit from this discussion?"

PRICING

Probably one of the biggest mistakes I see people make when it comes to discussing pricing is comparing pricing to their budget. You see, pricing is a feeling and here's my proof.

When you want to buy a new dress aside from general likability the next thing people do is look at the price tag. We do this because we want to use our internal feelings to measure the value we would get from the dress vs the reality of our checkbook or credit card. How many times have you ever looked at a dress, shirt, suit, liked what you saw, and then you saw the price. Often times our heads are saying, that's really nice but it FEELS too expensive.

If you are shopping for a TV, we may want the 65" $5,000 curved 4HD with bluetooth surround sound but we will often settle for the 48" $799, Samsung Smart TV because that price FEELS better.

So how do we translate this into sales? Traditionally people have been coached to give price and then zip the lip, shut up, and not say anything until the prospect says something. It's been my experience that no longer works. The reason it doesn't work is because so many of the products and services we sell are not "budgeted" items.

Moving forward that means that no matter what you give as price we already know they usually don't have a budget. We also know that others will have to give input, so we are typically going to get a luke-warm answer at best.

Remember pricing is a feeling. So here are the questions I encourage sales teams to use when they give pricing.

The price for our service is $XXX, How does that feel?

You'd be surprised at the answers you will get. They run the gambit of...

1. "That feels a little high?" (Ok, that's good to know, we now know they have something in mind.)
2. "That feels good actually." (Ok, that's good to know we now know they have something in mind.)
3. "I am not sure, we are just beginning our journey." (Again, good intel into their buyers' journey.)
4. "That feels ok, but ..." (Ok does not mean good, it's a smoke screen for high, but again we now know we have more work to do.)

So why does this work? There are a few reasons:

1. It is a pattern interrupt that people typically do not have a prepared answer.
2. You are using an open-ended question to force them to respond.
3. The word feeling is an emotion. You have an automatic reflex to the word like happy, sad, angry, that is hard to cloak.

So there you have it, the real f-word in sales.

How do you feel about this post? Would love to see your comments.

About the author -

Richard is a Saas, Sales and Start-Up veteran bringing 20 years of experience to his role as owner of The Harris Consulting Group and as Director of Training and Consulting Services at Sales Hacker. Clients ask Richard to help with defining, implementing and measuring sales as it relates to The Four P's: People, Performance, Planning, and Process at the top, middle, and back end of the sales funnel. He specializes in helping organizations improve the quality of the conversations SDRs, Sales Account Executives, and Customer Success Professionals have with prospects and clients which yield revenue growth including larger order sizes, shorter sales cycles, higher profitability, and reduced churn.The Harris Consulting Group clients include Visa, Pager Duty, PandaDoc, Gainsight, Datanyze, Udemy, Litmos, RevelSystems, LevelEleven, TopOpps, UserTesting and a host of others.

You can contact Richard here if you have questions pertaining to your own unique situation(s).