Do We Sometimes Fail to Make a Sale …
… because we talk our clients out of making a purchase?
by Stuart Livesey
Just recently we saw a major lead fizzle out to nothing. It was one of those potential jobs with a local small business that looked as though it was definitely going ahead and all the client needed was to see a formal quote.
We’d met with them, we’d listened to them, we’d answered their questions honestly and pointed out a few areas where they might need to adjust their planning so that their venture would succeed and everything looked very promising. They even had a ballpark figure before they got the written quote so they knew what it was going to cost … and then it all just fizzled out to nothing.
We’d put a lot of work and effort into preparing that quote so we’ve spent some time since then thinking about where we might have made mistakes.
This article - Things Aren’t Always What They Seem - has helped us see where we might have made those mistakes.
Now I’m not saying that we should have sold the product to the client regardless of whether we knew it would work in the way the client wanted and it to or not but it’s made us think about ways we could have better served the client and still been able to sell him something at the same time.
