“Soooo . . . wha-da-ya-think?” I said in anticipation. They said nothing. “Er, ahhh . . . how’d-ja-like’er?” I repeated. They were silent . . . “Well . . . how’d-she-feel?” They still said nothing . . . I was getting desperate . . .
I had blown it again. What was going on? What did I miss? Where did I go wrong? I searched frantically for something I could use to close the sale but came up empty.
They walked out without saying a word, and the look of disapproval from the sale manager confirmed my own thoughts of inadequacy and failure. Maybe I just wasn’t cut out for this line of work.
I was talking them out of the sale, or at least that is what my supervisor told me. They had come in, interested and qualified and after talking with me, left to find another dealer. I had lost the sale and now my job was on the line as well. I had to figure out what I was doing wrong.
On the advice of my supervisor, I made an appointment to talk with the new sales consultant hired by the company. I knew it was time to change something, I just had to find out what it was!
Well, she was different, I thought when I met her. She didn’t talk down to me or just point out what I was doing wrong. She was genuinely interested in me and what I had to say. She listened while I vented my frustrations over my inadequacies and asked pertinent questions that got me to look at what I was doing right in addition to the things that I wanted to change.
The more we talked, the more I found my confidence growing. It was clear she was just trying to get me “on my mettle” and improve my ability to cope with what I needed to handle.
With some subtle guiding, I was able to see that I had the cart before the horse with two ideas in backwards, causing me a lot of trouble.
First, I had always been taught to get them behind the wheel, and I’d close the deal. Dutifully, I had been following this advice, ignoring the steps of getting them to know me and trust me.
I was forcing them to take a test drive before they were ready for it. This was reversing the natural order of things and made them resent me for wasting their time. This was creating hostility and resentment that wasn’t there before.
She pointed out that any prospective sale starts out with a delicate potential connection between the salesperson and the customer which could be easily broken. Establishing a line of trust first is the most important step to put my attention on before trying to get them to do anything. Further she said that trust was something that can not be forced; it takes as long as it takes to develop it. Now that made sense! 
Second, I began to see that I was mostly thinking about me first and the prospect second. It should have been the reverse. I had been getting the cart before the horse here too.
By shifting this to thinking about the customer first, I had my priorities in order. If I were interested in the customer, they would tell me how they wanted to be sold. If I was only interested in me, I’d miss all the signals that told me how to close the deal.
No wonder my prospects had been drifting off without saying a word. I had been creating my own problems by getting the cart before the horse and only thinking about myself not really being interested in them.
The sales consultant only smiled knowingly.
Now, I saw how I could control the sales process, rather than letting it control me. I didn’t have to follow some rote, robotic procedure. Instead, I could adjust my sales process depending on what the customer was telling me they wanted, as long as I was interested and listening!
I just had been forcing them to fit my mold rather than adjusting to what they were telling me they needed and wanted. And I even realized that even my old saying of “just get them behind the wheel” might work if it was done at the right time.
Maybe I was in the right profession after all.
daniel w. jacobs
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