Pre-schoolers never stop asking until they get what they need but unfortunately, most people tend to lose that ability to ask for what they need as they grow up and subsequently conform to external pressures from parents, teachers, early employers, social peers, and the general community in which they live.
As a business owner, the loss of this skill, to ask for what you need from those who control what you require, can have a highly detrimental effect on your businesses’ ability to increase its sales revenue.
Your business will therefore reap the benefits if you relearn the ability to ask for what you need in order to grow your business. So how do you start relearning what you once did intuitively as a pre-schooler?
Until you ask someone specifically to take an action, exchange something for something else, or subscribe to a different point of view, you might be selling hard, but you are not gaining any real ground. Therefore, if you have lost the ability to ask for specific outcomes that help you to advance your own agenda, you need to reprogram your brain back to that of a pre-schooler.
In a nutshell, you need to practice, and practice again, the art of asking for the outrageous, until you can do it without cracking up, flinching, sweating, or shaking uncontrollably, and can do it with utter conviction.
Try practicing to ask a prospect to pay $50,000.00 for the privilege of buying a clapped out second hand car, until you can do it in the expectation that you might just be able to pull it off one day.
When you can do this, you are ready to effectively ask for the small things you need your prospects to do in order for you to help them, and at the same time significantly increase the number of sales you make for your business, in any given time frame.
It may surprise you, but most people are happy to give you what you need if you ask in the right way at the right moment. Unfortunately, business owners struggling with making sufficient sales tend to telegraph that they are squeamish about asking for what they need, and as a consequence, their prospects feel the same way about giving and the sales never get booked.
Once you have determined exactly what it is that you and your business need your prospects to do for you, and you have a compelling reason (the future of your business) to ask for what you need, you should then be able to successfully apply what you have relearned, and you should then be rewarded by seeing a significant increase in your sales revenue.
When was the last time you really asked for exactly what you needed from your sales prospects?
A better question perhaps is, when was the last time you asked yourself what you want?
What will you now do differently?
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About Me
- Daniel Watson
- Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
- Born in the mid 1950's and raised in a very small country town situated in Northern Victoria. Resident of Melbourne since 1980 and happy to stay living in one of the world's most liveable cities. You can view my professional profile at http://www.linkedin/in/danielwatson
2 comments:
I needed to read this today because I have been dealing with a recalcitrant client who absolutely has to provide some input for our project to start off well! Thanks for the encouragement!
From LinkedIn -
Daniel,
Great work on your blog. Insight, wisdom and a call to action delivered in an easy to read style. Thank you.
Enjoyed this one specifically as it touches a key tenant close to my heart. In the work I do with my clients I spend a lot of time discussing what is the action-centered objective for your next conversation. If the conversation went really well, what would you want your client/prospect to do for you? That unless they are in action towards whatever outcome you seek you are simply having a chat - so agree what is possible upfront.
Interestingly there is often a lot of initial push back to being really clear as to what the purpose of the meeting is. Comments like.."Hugh, I do that but not until later in the meeting, maybe 30minutes in." The danger, of course, is that the initial 30 minutes of conversation could be a total waste of time for both of you if you are not careful. Back when things were more formal it was expected to have a printed agenda with an objective at the top. We seem to have lost that clarity as we have become more casual. My view is in this day and age of cafe-based business meetings it is even more important to be clear as to what you want if the conversation goes well, to at least have agreement as to what is possible for them to commit to if it is a successful meeting.
Without an action of some sort we are simply assuming we know what is going to happen. Remember success is..... Just a conversation.
www.justaconversation.com
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