[E255] Stop Disassembling Cars

I am so glad that you're here. I'm so glad that you're taking the time to hopefully up a level your sales career or your sales team by listening to podcasts like this. Hopefully you've subscribed. If not, make sure to subscribe. And if you like this, leave a rating and a review. And in this episode, I am going to address some sales related questions to try to help everybody in sales do more, be more and sell more. With their career and achieve their goals. Now let's go ahead and jump into this episode. So I was in the market for buying a new car recently, and I went to a car dealership. And I test drove the car, we checked it out. I really liked it and I wanted to buy it except I had some questions. I was hesitating. I wasn't sure if this was really the right purchase, the right time, if it was really the right decision. So the salesperson to help convince me. decided to disassemble the entire car in front of me to show me all of the parts, to show me how it worked, to show me all the gears and the wires and everything that was included in the car so that I could see how it worked so I would know if it was something I wanted to buy. And obviously, of course, that worked because as soon as I saw it completely disassembled, I thought, hey, this is a great deal. There's so much in this car that makes it worth it. I just have to have it. And then, of course, it took a long time to put it back together, but I bought the car and it was a great decision. Obviously, if that were to happen, it would be a mind blowing experience if that's how cars were sold or TVs were sold. Could you imagine wanting to buy a TV and the salesperson thinks the best way to help you understand the value and what the TV will do for you? Is to take it apart down to the circuit boards so you can understand the mechanics of the TV so you can then relate the value you're going to get from it with the parts that are involved and the inner workings of how it works. Most consumers don't care how something works. They want the results and not just consumers, right? A lot of times I talk about sales and a lot of people think that doesn't apply to business. When you're dealing with a company, small, medium enterprise, it is people are the same, whether they're consumers in their living room or their consumers in their office doesn't matter. It's all the same. They're consumers. They are having to make a decision. They're having to buy. There might be other stakeholders involved, but they're a consumer at some level. And fundamentally, they don't care how something works. They want the results. Nobody buys a car because of the parts. Now, obviously, there's collectors of cars, and they want to know that everything is in tip top shape. It's a collector's item, and it'll be worth something later on, and that's an investment. That's completely different. But in general, nobody cares what it does, and the parts involved, they want to know what is in it for them. That's the theme in some of these episodes that I've been doing recently, is I'm seeing this a lot where the challenge is salespeople. Are over explaining and I see this a lot when someone is selling a service, especially something that can't be touched, can't be seen, can't be smelt, can't be heard, can't be tasted, right? It's this kind of cloud of service where you just don't know what it does until it does something and gets you somewhere. You just don't know because it's hard to trust. It's hard to understand what is involved. You look at a car and everyone understands, okay, there's parts of a car and they know what it's going to do for them. And so they don't need to take an apart. But when somebody's selling services, one of the challenges that they start taking apart those services and they start explaining every single piece of that service so that somebody can visualize it. I know I have done that before early on in my sales career used to do that as well. It's a common practice for a lot of analytical by type salespeople or people who are insecure. It could be either one of those categories where they just want to explain and or over explain so they can get somebody to believe in, to visualize, to get the concept of it. And to trust that it's going to help them. Yes, your customer wants to know how your service works. They want to know what it will do for them. They don't care about the features. They care about results. Yes, they want to know some of the inner workings. But really about what's in it for them. Again, that's what I keep talking about recently because it's so important. If someone really wants details, you can get into the weeds with them. They'll ask you when you're dealing with an analytical customer, they're going to want those details because that's going to help them feel secure. In that case, give them some details. Otherwise, make it a standard practice to stay high level. When talking about the mechanics of your service or your product, nobody needs to know how electricity works to know that when they turn the light switch on, they're going to get light. They want to know that when they hit that switch, the light turns on, they'll be able to see or spend time with their family or eat a meal or read a book. Whatever that is. They just want to know the results. Can I hit this switch and get light and can I do what I want to do with that light? I don't care. Please don't explain to me how electricity works. I don't care. And so too many salespeople get caught up in the nuance, nuances of what they're selling, or they get too excited about the little details or they lack confidence. When someone goes into a lot of detail, it can be due to the salesperson trying to convince the other person and convincing is bad. Persuading is good. Serving the other person is good. Solving problems is good. Convincing not so good. One of the other side detriments of going into a lot of explanation and disassembling that car to show somebody how it works, disassembling your service. So they can see every single step, every single detail, every single process that goes into it, is that you could seriously trigger them to fall into analysis paralysis, which is very bad. And analysis paralysis is when there's too many options, there's too much information, it's overwhelmed, they're trying to find the right solution, the perfect solution, and there's too many decisions to make. And so when the brain gets confused, it generally defaults to no. It generally defaults to shutting down, staying safe, protecting itself, saying no to whatever decisions at hand and waiting for the right solution to present itself. And so when you're convincing by going through those details, you can trigger analysis process, which will definitely cause you to lose a lot of deals. So what to do instead? Don't disassemble the car. Don't disassemble the TV. Don't disassemble. Your service to try to justify why somebody should pay for it and what the value is. The value to them based on the cost is relative to the outcome. It's relative to the result. It's relative to what they're going to do. So always focus on that. Make sure to listen. To the last few episodes where I've talked about this specifically, because it's all about the value when you sell to the value and you help them see the value, how it gets there doesn't matter. I don't need to know how that car works to know the value I'm going to get from that car, whether it's transportation, whether it's ego, whether it's making me excited, making me happy letting me have fun, whatever that is. I don't need to know the details. I just need to know what it's going to do for me. So make sure you focus on that. If you actually sell less on the convincing and showing them under the hood, if you do less of that and connect with more about why they want, none of those other details will matter.