Your Clients are Your Best Sales Tool

I've been binge watching Cobra Kai while I've been doing busy work over the last week or so. It's really an incredible show. In one episode, notorious villain Johnny Lawrence gives his view of what happened in Karate Kid to one of his students. Now, I loved that movie, and I HATED Johnny Lawrence, but, hot damn if his view of what happened in the movie didn't make me more empathetic towards him.

We all bring our own circumstances into our view of the world. We all bring our own baggage into every interaction. We've talked before on this site about how our individual circumstance can affect how good of a salesperson we are. One way to become a BETTER salesperson is to actively attempt to understand our clients situation and world view.

We spend a lot of time guessing their views on our team. We try to pick up clues seeing the notes in CRM. We try to pick up clues in the way they talk, their past buying behavior, their zip code, how we guess the interest in their voice...but guessing gives no credit to our clients.

If you walked into the doctor's office with a limp and he said, 'You clearly tore your ACL,' we'd ask him to actually take a look at it because we know it's our ankle hurting and not our knee.

Even the toughest, shortest speaking clients break into full-blown conversation when we push the topic of the conversation to be 100% about them. And the more they talk, the better quality information we get. The better quality information we get, the easier it is to make a strong, customized recommendation.

This comes with good questions. And good follow-up questions. If they are offering you little, keep pushing them to open up. If they are opening up, encourage them to continue speaking. You drive the car with your questions, but give them the space to outline ALL of their views on being in your stadium.

If some are bad? Great, we get to handle their objections. If they are good? Awesome. How can we get them to come out more? Who else do they know that they would want to take to a game? Why did they like that seat location?

When you care enough about them to engage them, and not race to our information, you'll be surprised how much you actually like your job...even the Johnny Lawrence's you encounter.