- Great to meet you
- Asking questions
- Making the pitch
- Closing
It’s amazing how often, as salespeople or fundraisers, in our breathless urgency to make our pitch, we skip to step 3.
Ultimately there’s a wrapper around this entire conversation, and that wrapper is our true intention.
Every moment we spend demonstrating genuine curiosity, we make clear that we care most about meeting their needs, and will pursue a sale only in service of that end.
Yes, our future customer wants to know that we are smart, capable, and that we have a great solution for the price, but the first thing she wants to know is: what’s this guy’s true intention? If we don’t pass that test, we never get out of the gate.
The truth is, today everyone has a nearly infinite choice about who they are going to work with, or what organization they are going to support. The deeper truth is that no product, service, intervention, or charity is so much better than everything else out there that it wins solely on the merits.
This is why we begin with courtesy and basic good manners.
We follow that with genuine curiosity around the problem someone else is trying to solve, and, from that deep interest, we explore if, how, and in what ways the thing we have on offer today might solve that problem.
These aren’t boxes to check so we can get on with our sale, these are the first steps towards building a partnership on a foundation of respect and service.
No skipping steps.
