You walk into a store to find a specific item. When approached by a salesperson asking if you need help, you automatically say no. Does this mean you know exactly where your item is located, or that you are completely versed in the aspects of that item that will influence your decision to purchase? Not usually.
Your original response to the salesperson has everything to do with your desire to avoid a chit-chat conversation that has very little relevance on your decision to buy. You also want to avoid the potential discomfort of telling them that you’re just browsing and have no intent to buy yet. This refusal of help is based on a mental template (or internal guide) created by past experience, knowledge, circumstance, and tendencies. In this case, you avoid what you need – help finding an item – to avoid a potentially uncomfortable and unproductive sales interaction. Sound a little unfair? If you think about it, you’ve judged and assessed the situation without giving the salesperson a chance to prove you wrong.
Every decision-maker you meet has an internal bias. It’s human nature to have an internal set of rules that guide perceptions, decisions, and choices. This isn’t something you should take lightly. As you know, decision making of any kind is an emotional exercise and subject to every assumption, past experience, habit, and tendency.
Break Through Your Prospects Biases
This is exactly what happens on every sales call you’ve ever been on, and will happen as long as you’re in sales. Your prospects have a mental template prior to meeting you. The way to remove your prospect’s preexisting expectations and bias is to break their mental template. To break it – you’ll have to learn to stop selling.
Why stop selling? It’s simple and it will help you avoid every pre-conceived experience, judgment, and perception that your prospects have made regarding sales meetings. These biases (mental templates) are what stand between you and the prospect’s trust, commitment, and loyalty to doing business with you.
