I will leave it to you to decide who was more effective for their respective tickets at the Vice President debate Wednesday evening. However, from a strictly sales point of view, here are three Lessons Learned for anyone in sales.
Be Real
No doubt both Kamala Harris and Mike Pence prepped mightily for their debate Of the two, though, Kamala Harris showed a much wider range of emotion and
energy in her responses which carried through to her facial expressions and into her body language. Watching her, you felt like there was a real person talking to you. Mike Pence responded in a steady, slow-paced, almost hypnotic manner, not only making it difficult to stay interested in what he had to say, but also making it hard for a listener to find the “there” there in him.
How do you come across to prospects and clients? Do you know your products and services so well that you sound like a pre-recorded taped message when you speak, or, are you comfortable enough in your own skin, so that you relate like a real person to them by:
- Being spontaneous
- Really listening
- Showing reactions
- Acknowledging when you don’t know something
- Being open to more than one viewpoint
- Displaying appropriate humor
Lesson 1: People need to see and feel the “there” in you if they are going to trust and do business with you.
Techniques Kill
Saying “Thank you” for a tough question is something you might do in a sales conversation, as in, “Thank you for bringing that up,” or, “Thank you for being candid about X.” That response communicates “I hear you,” gives you some time to think, and offers a nice bridge to your response. As a sales technique for handling the one or two difficult objections or concerns you might get, it is fine. However, saying “Thank you,” or, “Thank you for that question,” or. using another kind of bridge repeatedly before answering, as Pence did, smacks of condescension and insincerity and, in sales, makes you suspect.
I recall once having lunch with a money manager who wanted me to invest with him. Every time I changed position, he changed position. If I put my hands on the table, he put his hands on the table. If I sat back, he sat back. If a took a drink from my glass, he did the same. He was obviously trained to mirror a prospect’s mannerisms so as to be “in sync” with that person’s rhythms. Well, it was so obvious what he was doing that I decided to have some fun. I kept changing positions, moving my hands, etc. just to see what he would do. If I had twisted myself into a pretzel, no doubt he would have done the same. Of course, I never gave him my business.
Yes, there is value in mirroring a prospect’s speaking pace and language, but when the art of being “in sync” is seen as an obvious trick, it totally undermines your credibility.
Another time someone was selling an expensive super vacuum cleaner to me and he kept repeating my name, as in, “Now, Anne…,” “Anne, not only…,” “Anne did you know..” I finally stopped him, told him that, though this might surprise him, I actually knew my name. When I added that I did sales training, and that he had had terrible training, it totally flummoxed him!
Lesson 2: Beware of “technique-y” selling.
Answer the Question!
Both Harris and Pence ducked key questions and pivoted to answers that they preferred to give on other issues. To see that once was annoying. To see it done repeatedly was exasperating, shut listeners down to everything they chose to say — and, again, cast doubt on their credibility. (I don’t know about you, but I found myself yelling at the TV, “Answer the damn question!”)
They were lucky. The moderator failed to push for real answers. Buyers will not be that forgiving. They will insist on the answers they need to make their decision.
Lesson 3: If you want to maintain trust with prospective clients, don’t dance around tough questions
No doubt there were other sales lessons to take away from the Harris-Pence debate, but these were three that jumped out at me. Hope you found these observations useful.
Be sure to vote!
Anne Miller
Words Matter – Make What You Say Pay!
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