Your prospect didn’t read the script

Your meeting is all arranged, you have done your homework, rehearsed how you think the meeting will go, prepared your questions, polished your presentation, it can’t fail.

At some point between the beginning and the end of the meeting, your prospect decides he is not going to behave like  a) a reasonable human being, b) the last 20 look-a-like prospects you met c) the person you mentally rehearsed the script with.

What do you do? Of course there may be those who think that’s why I don’t have even try to prepare for sales meetings. However if that is your approach, could you already be inadvertently positioning yourself to play a subservient role? Your prospect will make the running and you will follow. In this case you will struggle to establish a ‘meeting of equals’.

There are buyers who are expert in positioning sales people into the ‘one down’ position. They keep you waiting in reception for an hour, they cut the meeting short due to rescheduling of other meetings, they introduce hypothetical deadlines to apply pressure.  As a salesperson or business owner you put up with all of this manipulative behaviour because you believe that if you jump when asked to, you stay in the running for the business…don’t you?

Success selling requires you to establish and maintain equal business stature, this begins well before the meeting. Sandler clients learn how to set an ‘Up Front Contract’ a clear, mutually accepted set of outcomes and next steps through which a buyer and a seller determine what will constitute a successful outcome the meeting and the next steps to be taken.  Sometimes that means the salesperson has to take a deep breath and resist the buyers attempts to manipulate things.  This needs preparation, the ‘right’ attitude, techniques to manage the situation and an understanding of how you are being manipulated and how you should behave to manage this. Sometimes it means you should walk away. It forces the buyer to consider whether their attempts to position you as a supplier who is no different to his other potential suppliers is really in their best interest. Would you really want to be regarded as ‘one of many’. It sounds like an opportunity you would be better passing on and investing your time to uncover a better prospect, one who will value your contribution to their business.

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