Years ago, when I was on holiday in Disneyland, my family and I were enjoying a drink and some snacks when we were approached by one of the sales staff from the resort we were staying at.
He recognised us and got us into conversation about our holiday.
Of course, I recognised immediately that he was trying to up-sell us on some tickets for the resort, and I braced myself for a sales pitch.
Instead, he asked me a question that I wasn’t expecting, and it made me think about how value is added and anticipated when we are discussing with a prospect we are in front of.
He asked me the question, ‘When you go home and people ask you about your holiday, what do you want them to think?’
I thought that was a great question, as it falls into the bracket of ‘hypnotic questioning’.
By that, I mean, it makes you contemplate the future situation and takes you out of your current mode of thinking.
Anything that does that successfully can be considered as putting you into a trance-like state, like hypnosis.
I sat and thought for a second or two and replied that I want them to think we had had the best holiday ever and that they are totally and utterly jealous of our experience!
Well, that’s the character I am!
He then asked, ‘so what has to happen for that to be the truth?’
I rattled off a few things that we still needed to experience and how much we would be looking forward to visiting them and enjoying them.
He asked if we needed help in obtaining the tickets for those specific events and then had us eating out of the palm of his hand!
It made me think afterwards about exactly what he had done to accomplish his goal of making ticket sales.
What he did was find out what my family and I valued most to make it a valuable experience.
He didn’t simply ask if we wanted tickets; he built up our anticipation by discussing what our friends would be asking us when we went home.
Now, that didn’t make us focus on tickets; it made us focus on the emotional impact those events would have on us.
THAT was what we considered valuable to us.
How can you apply that formula?
By asking the buyer, when your products or services are actually being used, what do you want people to be saying about them?
What might they be thinking and feeling?
How might they view the decision that has been made?
By doing that, you put them in future-thinking mode, and you get them to emotionally attach themselves to the decision they are about to make.
Try asking how your buyer wants to see the future.
They then tell you what’s most valuable in their eyes, and that enables you to start painting pictures of how that future can be realised with your solution.
Happy Selling!
Sean McPheat
Managing Director
MTD Sales Training | Sales Blog | Image courtesy of Big Stock Photo
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