The Direction of the Appointment

I heard a very interesting comment the other day made about a of mine. This particular sales person was commenting how badly the appointment had gone because my had "directed" the conversation with the customer(through an Agenda) instead of "letting the customer tell him what he wanted"



This is not made up, this really happened. One of the current selling models in my organization is for reps to bring in another rep who may be more experienced in Managed Print Services and conduct an appointment together(you can imagine the possibility for train-wreckage)

Ok, so to be fair the "complainer" was a government rep, who is accustom to "taking orders" not recommending an approach - at first I was amazed and then I became amused. This is how most sales people think. The want to know "how many" and "when"; the only questions posed are about budgets and purchase orders and delivery schedules and pricing discounts! And to expect this ilk to even dare to pose a question to their customer that starts with the word "why..." is ludicrous! (Have you ever seen the movie Scanners?)

I have a new phrase, "Any monkey can _______" fill in the blank. If I find myself engaged in anything a monkey can do, I try to stop myself. For instance, "any monkey can give somebody a price..." or "any monkey can hand a prospect a brochure..." or "any monkey can take an order and not ask WHY"