2 steps to winning sales (by being unreasonable)

manPay-off: A 2 step process to win people over
Investment: 2 mins

One of my favourite all time quotes is this:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man
– George Bernard Shaw

I’m a big fan of innovation, entrepreneurship and progress. I love hearing stories of people like Steve Jobs who dreamt up the impossible and then organised (or in his case shouted at) his resources to make it real.

He was totally unreasonable. He bent the world to achieve his vision, and we all made progress.

Help people bend their world to create their vision

In sales, or when trying to persuade anyone to come round to your way of thinking, that’s what you must do! You must help your customers to bend their world to achieve their vision.

These people like reasonable outcomes, but prefer (and usually end up buying) unreasonable outcomes and they need and want YOUR unreasonable help.

Are you up to it?

Rather than reasonably following George Bernard Shaw’s quote, let me unreasonably bend it so that sales people can use it:

Reasonable sales people adapt to their customer’s thinking, requests, and ‘world’. But unreasonable sales people use their expertise to help their customer’s bend their world so that they achieve maximum benefits and achieve their vision. Therefore, all progress (and a maximum win:win, delighted customers, repeat business and referrals..) depends on the unreasonable sales person.

“That’s all very well”, I hear you say, “but what customer listens to and trusts an unreasonable sales person?”

One who has met the ‘reasonable’ sales person first, and learned to trust them.

The process is this:

1. Be reasonable. Seek to understand. Listen. Adapt. Show them that achieving their vision is your no. 1 priority. Help them understand themselves, their situation, their vision, and the constraints and challenges between where they’re at and their vision. Earn the right to become unreasonable.

Then notice when they switch to calling upon your expertise (you’ll know it when they ask you thought provoking questions and try to tie their thinking to yours as you answer).

2.Become unreasonable once they trust you and your expertise. Help them to understand that you have expertise that will assist them in achieving their vision more effectively, or in a more desirable way. The goal is to improve on their current thinking, plans and ideas, in a way that benefits them.

Show them clearly how you can help them to bend their world and their resources to achieve what they want, and you’ll win them over.

If your sales team (or even customer facing non-sales people in your business) need bending to help you achieve your vision, give me a shout. I can help regardless of where you are. I’ve helped people from small, medium and large global businesses (including Apple, KPMG and AMEX) to do this.

More on how I help here: http://helppeoplebuy.com/

And if you want more posts like this, you can subscribe via the box at the top.

Scroll to Top