How to blow a deal without realising it!

What if your potential clients are slipping away, despite positive initial meetings? We've all been there - a promising interaction with a client that suddenly goes cold. This episode unpacks the mystery behind disappearing clients, specifically within the car sales industry. I share my own frustrating experience of trying to buy a Land Rover in Sydney, only to see the deal fall through due to common salesperson missteps. From not thoroughly checking available stock to failing to grasp client flexibility, discover the pitfalls that can make or break a sale. Learn the importance of setting clear deadlines and offering alternative solutions to efficiently meet client expectations.

Effective communication and follow-up can significantly influence sales success. Reflecting on another personal story, I highlight how a local dealer lost my business due to poor follow-up, leading me to purchase from a competitor. This episode underscores the critical role of understanding different client buying styles and maintaining control over the sales process. By ensuring clients talk more during interactions, salespeople can better address their needs and secure deals. Listen in to uncover practical strategies for enhancing client communication and boosting sales performance, and don't miss out on our upcoming training courses for more in-depth learning.

Chapters

• 0:00 Client Disappears After Positive Meeting
• 9:22 Sales Strategy and Client Communication
• 21:15 Effective Client Communication Skills

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

Hello again. Have you had that situation where you've had a meeting with a client? Either you've gone to see your client or your prospective client, if it's a new client, or they've come to you, if you're I'm actually thinking car sales here, because that's the example I want to give you but a situation where the client will tend to come into you and visit you and at the end of that meeting, that discussion, you're feeling pretty positive about everything. It seems to have gone really well and you're pretty confident you're going to get a sale as a result of that meeting, and then your client just disappears and you just can't get hold of them. They just kind of drop off the face of the earth. So I want to talk about this from a couple of perspectives, to talk about what may have happened and, in seeing this, both with my own experience and also with people I've been working with, what tends to cause it. So the first example I suppose I want to talk about is looking at it really from the buyer's perspective, so from the client's side. And the example I want to give is actually one that I had with a salesperson when I was looking to buy a new car and I like to use my local dealer. In fact, I like to use local stores for everything pretty much, partly because it's convenient having people who are local, but also I like to support local businesses, so there's a double edge to that. So that may be applicable to you if you tend to be active in a very specific geographical area, to be active in a very specific geographical area. So one thing that might come out of that for you is that your client already may be a little bit predisposed to buy from you because they want to support you. They want to support you as a local business, and that was certainly the case with me.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Now, this dealer it was Jaguar Land Rover at the time, because I had a Land Rover and wanted to buy another one and I was living in a suburb, I should say, on the northern beaches in Sydney. So we had a few car places around, but they were mostly in Australia. You tend to get Toyota, and the Japanese cars are the more dominant ones, and then you've got Ford and Holden. So Holden is the General Motors vehicle, but something like Land Rover you wouldn't really expect to get where I was living, because we're kind of a little not too far out of it. But we're not in the city and the main sort of car yards, the main garages, whatever you want to call them, wherever you are, are sort of over to the west. So there was a certain area in Sydney where you would tend to find a lot of these places in the same place.

Speaker 1: 3:07

So, given that I had a Land Rover and I wanted to buy another one, I was quite keen to support this dealer. So I walked into them, this dealer. So I walked into them, walked into the showroom and I'd had a look online at the particular model I was interested in and I kind of put together my ideal car with all of the different options. But, bearing in mind I'm in Australia, the car's being made in the UK or somewhere else, but it's not being made locally. It's got to be shipped. And I sat down with this salesperson and had a chat to her about the car I had and talked about what I wanted to replace it with and gave her this sort of ideal configuration and she said that's fine, but that's going to take three months to deliver and we need to get the order in by Friday. So this was on the weekend. In fact I'd walked up because I was quite close, so I had to just drop my car in to get them to evaluate it so we could get the trade-in sorted out, which was not a big deal. I did that in the week, but for me some aspects of that were good. She gave me a definite point where I needed to place the order, which I think was a good thing to do, because in order to have that delivery expectation of three months I would need to order that week. That's fine and she listened to what I wanted.

Speaker 1: 4:34

However, where it kind of fell apart was, although I'd got this ideal configuration together, I didn't actually care that much about quite a few of the options. It was simply an ideal and I thought, well, if you've got something in country which meets that more or less, then I'll be happy to do that. And she didn't. A couple of things that happened or didn't happen really, and the reason I wanted to raise them in this because you might be in a similar situation, not necessarily with cards, but with whatever it is you're selling. So she didn't have a look at what stock was in country that might be close to what I wanted.

Speaker 1: 5:15

So there were certain things that I definitely wanted. So there was a particular style of wheel that I liked and I thought I'm going to be paying a lot of money for this car, so I'll have those and also a glass sunroofy thing that Land Rover do. So I definitely wanted one of those because I thought it was pretty neat and that was it. Because I thought it was pretty neat, and that was it. I wanted an automatic car and I wanted a diesel engine at the time, but beyond that, and I kind of liked blue, but I wasn't too bothered about the colour.

Speaker 1: 5:47

So I had a few things that I definitely wanted, but not very many of them. And then there were a whole bunch of nice to haves. But really, with any of the nice to haves I would sooner I'd be quite happy not to have them if I could get the car fairly quickly. And in fact, when it comes to buying cars, I like to buy ex-demonstrators because generally you get a lot of options on them, they're well stocked and you don't pay the full price, so I'm quite happy with that. So I wasn't somebody who had a massive list of things I definitely wanted, and if any one of them was missing that would kill the deal. So she didn't pick up on that.

Speaker 1: 6:25

We didn't have that conversation and I must admit, being in sales myself, I'll help the salesperson to a point, but after that I want them to sell to me. I want them to do their job. I'm not going to do the job for them, and I mentioned this because it might be something that your clients or your prospective clients not all of them, I'm sure, but you're bound to have one or two people like me who actually don't want to do all the work. You know you're going to, or, from a client's perspective, you're going to be getting some sort of commission, you're going to be getting a deal from them. Why should they do all of the work? And all you're doing is writing out the order and putting it through the system and that's that, you know. Why should you get paid for that? So I sort of have that attitude a little bit and I mention it because some of your clients may also feel that way, and this can be one of the areas where we drop the ball a little bit as salespeople. So that was one of the things.

Speaker 1: 7:24

She didn't check what was in stock. She didn't look at demonstrators particularly. In fact, what she did do I lie slightly they did have a demonstrator, but it was the model that I was trading in and not the model that I'd asked for. And she was actually trying to sell me this other model they had on the floor which they wanted to shift, and it was a different model. I wanted to go for a different model. So that also didn't really help the situation because to me she wasn't listening. She wasn't listening to what I wanted. We didn't explore that option particularly. She was just kind of pitching that to me.

Speaker 1: 8:02

So again, while it's worth trying that you can kind of run it by a client and sort of fish a little bit, see if they're likely to buy for the ex-demonstrator that you've got on the floor or something you've got in stock that you kind of want to move, and it gives them immediate delivery if that's an issue for them. But to me it wasn't fully explored. I was absolutely very clear that I did not want another one of those cars Nothing wrong with them but I wanted something different and that also was a point that kind of bugged me a little bit different, and that also was a point that kind of bugged me a little bit. Anyway, so to move on with the situation. Great, she had told me that I needed to place an order by the end of the week and that was all good, and I did go in my own car, so we got all that sorted out, so it was all ready to go and I kind of sat back and I thought, well, honestly, I've done the work with her. I mean, I've sat down with her, it is a local dealer, I'll put the order through them, although I really didn't want to wait three months because I don't have that sort of attention span, and I thought, well, I'm just going to see what she does, because she knows the situation, she knows I'm there, this is not an insignificant order. I mean, it's a reasonably expensive car. And I didn't hear from her.

Speaker 1: 9:22

So that evening it was a Friday, so I was off having dinner somewhere and I just started flicking through on the phone to another dealer. In fact it was another Land Rover dealer across the other side of Sydney, but I bought my previous car from them and they had a demonstrator which was the model I was looking for, had the color, the wheels, the roof that I wanted, and it was X demonstrates. So it had a bunch of other stuff and they were willing to sell that. So I just did an online inquiry. The salesperson there because this was in the evening so they closed. But the salesperson there got in touch with me the following morning this was a Saturday morning with me the following morning this was a Saturday morning we had a quick chat about my trading and I asked him to give me a few minutes. Had about 10 minutes, just kind of thought it over, checked the numbers, called him back and said yep, let's do it. So that was that. So I just bought it.

Speaker 1: 10:22

I'm one of these people when it comes to cars. I don't drive them or anything like that. Once I know what I want, I really can't be bothered with all the hassle. I just want to get it done and move on. So you will have clients who are that way. But remember, if you're someone who this sounds really bizarre, really bizarre way to buy something like that, one of the things you need to understand and we need to understand as salespeople, that our way of buying something is not necessarily the same as our clients will buy and we're likely to have a variety of different buying styles with different clients. So again, another takeaway because you evaluate something you're going to buy in a certain way, it doesn't mean your client will do the same thing. They may well work in a very different way to you. So you need to be open to that. You need to be flexible.

Speaker 1: 11:18

So bottom line was I ended up buying this car and I'd never even driven one. That's how I go. So for this other person, you know what happened there. She didn't take the initiative and contact me. She had all my details. She had been the one to tell me that I needed to get the order in by the Friday, but she never followed up. Now, if she had followed up, there's a very good chance I would have just bought from her, because I was all ready to go and, as I say, I like to support local businesses. So I would have done that.

Speaker 1: 11:53

But the other thing I've also said is I'm not going to do all the work for them. So I did sit back. So I was just curious to see what she did, and she did nothing. And then we come back to well, I'm not going to do all the work on this sale for you, I'm not going to do the sale for you, so I'm just going to go look around and in fact, got a much better deal by looking at what was around within Sydney that I could get hold of fairly easily. So that is the first thing I kind of want to share. So what are the takeaways from this? So this I'm obviously talking about this as the client and talking about why I didn't make this sale, and I don't know what this lady was thinking.

Speaker 1: 12:42

When I left the showroom after the first meeting, and certainly after I dropped in with my car to get there just to sort the trade in part of it, my guess is she was probably reasonably happy she would get a deal from it, because that dealership was quite small. We were a relatively small catchment area for those kind of cars. I never saw that many of them around and to me I would have thought she probably wasn't getting that many people wandering in ready to buy, you know, not tire kicking, to use a phrase, not wanting to look at models, not having, you know, trying to make their mind up. I knew what I wanted, I'd made my mind up, I was ready to go. So to me, I like clients like that because we can just get it done and get the order done. So from her perspective though I didn't follow up with her after I'd been in for the trade-in and really the ball was in her court.

Speaker 1: 13:41

And I think, as salespeople, this is one of the most important things we need to remember. With a sale, we need to control it. The moment you let go of that control and you leave it with the client, we don't know what's going on in their head. They may be going through the same thing that I went through, where I was thinking, well, why should I do this for her? And then I'm paying her so that I can do her job. Basically, why would I do that? So as the salesperson, you need to stay in control of it.

Speaker 1: 14:11

Having set a cutoff date, which was the Friday afternoon whenever that order needed to be placed, follow up. You know, follow up with your client. Give them the time by all means, although some clients you don't want to give them time, but that's a sort of another discussion, that's a more detailed discussion. But definitely, if you've specified a cutoff time, you absolutely have to follow up and you've got a much higher chance of securing that deal if you follow up on the time you've specified and remember to give yourself time to act. So if it was mid-afternoon on Friday, the order needed to be placed, then I would follow up either Friday morning or even Thursday afternoon sometime before. The advantage of a Thursday afternoon is that if you can't get them immediately, you've still got a few hours to play with, where you can still get the work done. But do always follow up and stay in control of that sale. So that was the first thing I wanted to talk about, which was the experience from the client.

Speaker 1: 15:22

The other reason why we don't hear from people is that in my experience, when that happens, we've probably been talking a lot in the meeting with the client, and what often happens then this is as people, not as salespeople, just as people. If we've been with one or more people and we've got to speak a lot talking about ourselves, we probably feel pretty good, and the reason for that is, for pretty much most people, our favorite subject is ourselves and talking about ourselves. Not everyone, again, but as a generalization I'd say that's reasonably true. So whatever's going on chemically in the brain, we tend to come out of that conversation pretty good about ourselves, because we're, we've been talking about ourselves is what's driven that.

Speaker 1: 16:12

Now, it may be that we were trying to help the other person, and something I've experienced and seen quite regularly is when someone has a problem and they're trying to share what's going on for them, the person they're trying to share with will tend to talk about their experience in the same situation. So for the person sharing their experience the second person, the one that the original person has gone to for help they are likely to come out of that feeling pretty good because they feel they've helped this person. They've been talking about themselves, their favorite subject. But for the person who's asked for help, their experience can be quite different. They may feel that they haven't been heard, that the other person just wants to talk about their experience and they're not interested in the experience that this particular person is going through. And they might be quite polite to the person who's doing all the talking, but inside they're just shutting down. Because it's actually very unusual to have people really genuinely listen to you when you're speaking about something. And if it's about something that's important to you, you can really turn somebody off if you don't give them that space to really open up and talk about what's happening for them. And the thing is to hold back and not make it all about you. Let it be about them, and I think so. This is a.

Speaker 1: 17:32

The situation I'm talking about is where somebody might be asking for support, but essentially sales people. We're really in the same boat. The reason we're in sales is that we're problem solvers. That's what sales people are, if you think about it. People come to us because they need something to improve their life in some way. It may be they have a genuine problem that needs fixing, and there are all sorts of scenarios where that could happen, and whatever you're offering is a way of maybe making if it's business to business, their production more efficient. Save them money, you know, maybe allow them to cut overhead costs in some way and maybe give them better access to customer records. They can be more efficient in customer support.

Speaker 1: 18:19

If it's individual people, if you're selling to individual clients, to private people, let's say it's a car. Why do they want the car? Well, it might be because their family has got bigger. They need to be able to handle a larger number of people on a more regular basis. They need to have to tow something if they're into some sort of a sport that involves towing. All these different reasons and I'm sure you can come up with a lot more, and I'm sure you can come up with reasons for your own situation, but the thing to keep in mind is they are trying to solve what they perceive as a problem. It might not consciously be a problem, but look at it that way, because if you're looking at a way of solving as a problem solver, you start to dive into well, what are the things we need to fix here? What are the criteria, what are the key points that we need to address with our solution, whatever that is, and going back to the car the example I gave there as a client key things were the wheel, the wheels on it, the roof, diesel, automatic color. Okay, it has some variability there. Ideally short delivery, though ideally pretty quick.

Speaker 1: 19:31

So this is what you need to establish when you're speaking to your client, and it's so important to get on top of those aspects. If you miss any one of those, that's where you're going to lose the sale. And if you fall into the trap of talking about yourself, going through the brochures, doing whatever, but it's all about you, you may well be turning off. Your client and there are probably most people that you're going to be dealing with will not tell you to your face that you're doing it wrong. They'll be polite, they'll nod, they'll give you all the signs that they think that you want, and inside, though they're already out the door they don't want to do business with you. So I'm going to stop this particular podcast there, but I hope it's given you a bit of food for thought.

Speaker 1: 20:21

And perhaps the takeaway from this particular podcast is to put yourself in your client's shoes. If you were to be buying from you, what do you want from that meeting? How do you want to feel during that meeting that you're having as the client, with you, as the salesperson? And just stop and think about that a little bit. And the key thing about it is to have conversations and to have the right conversations with people where you really get to understand what the most important things are, what you need to deliver, what the client's concerns are, those kind of things, and all of that is really the subject for another time I won't do it on this particular podcast.

Speaker 1: 21:15

Another time I won't do it on this particular podcast. But don't assume, because you've had a great conversation with somebody or if you're feeling pretty good, just stop and make sure that that client has been speaking at least as much as you and probably more. And there's an old adage from when I started in sales, and that is that we have two ears and one mouth, and salespeople need to be using them in that ratio. So make sure you're listening at least twice as much as you're talking. So that's it for this podcast. I'll talk to you on the next one. Don't forget, there are the training courses. You're welcome to ask me about those, and I'll speak to you on the next podcast. Bye for now.