Take the time to plan your day and focus on what’s important.
Don’t Prejudge.
Sales people often make the mistake of prejudging a prospective client according to name, occupation, color, race, income, etc. This can be a very costly mistake but that one we can overcome with constant practice and diligence.
Nothing we do in life is automatic. Most actions we use ‘automatically’ every day we learned early on in life. Walking is automatic, right? Wrong!
When you learned to walk you fell repeatedly - you got back up until you mastered the art of walking and it became automatic. Today you probably can walk, talk and eat all at the same time, but it took practice to reach this stage of ‘automaticism’, of performance without conscious thought.
So it is with our brain. We learn to string together specific words with specific meanings or judgments, usually dependent on our past experiences.
Words are not stored in our mind independently. Every content word seems to have a link with another. This is the way form and meaning interact in helping us retrieve a word we need – the link between the word “fish” and “chips” will be stronger for an Englishman whose Friday night dinner is fish and chips wrapped in newspaper, than perhaps for someone who seldom eats fish and chips. For that other person “fish” might link itself to “river” or “aquarium” depending on his experiences and various other facets of his life. Therefore, the words we see and use the most are the easiest ones for us to retrieve and string together.
However, the stringing of words can work against us, as in the case of prejudgment. This is something that may happen at any time, anywhere, in all walks of life. We prejudge a person before meeting them; or we prejudge a situation before the situation actually arises, based on a couple of words. We’re so used to stringing together certain combinations of words that we do it automatically and often in the wrong combination.
For example, Mr and Mrs. Smith have signed up for a timeshare presentation. Their income is below $40,000 per annum. He is a truck driver and she is a home maker. They rent their home and have three children. This is all the information that is available.
As a timeshare salesperson, the Smith's yearly income may trigger off an automatic association in our brain, linking the amount to such thoughts as ‘poor’, ‘can’t afford it’, ‘waste of time’, etc. Is this a true reflection of the Smiths? Do we know who and what they are before we spend some time with them? Indeed, do we know what they can or can’t afford to buy? We don’t know anything about the Smiths, except that they are married, have children, he works and gets paid, and she is a home maker.
To be successful, the salesperson must master the art of carefully listening to what the client is saying, observing body language and demeanor, and then mentally attaching the information to the product or service being offered.
In other words, the good sales person will link words together to form a new string of thought.
It takes time and practice to reach the stage where you don’t string words together automatically. If you hear a word/phrase, be conscious of what that word/phrase makes you think of. Make the word/phrase stand-alone until you have gleaned more information.
Your old way of thinking = $40,000 income = probably won’t be able to afford this.
Your new way of thinking - $40,000 income = they earn $40,000 a year.
Period! End of thought! Until you know more, don’t make a judgment.
Why shouldn’t we prejudge?
· If you have already judged your client because of a random word, you may never find out what their desires, needs, wants and passions are, and you may lose the sale.
· Your attitude and honest willingness to help your client may make a huge difference as to how your client judges YOU.
Learn not to prejudge
· Your brain is not a manmade machine. You can retrain it to think anyway you want it to.
· Realign your brain every morning so that it does not automatically string together certain trigger words, e.g. income, race, age, creed, nationality, occupation. Think of each word as an island, separate from anything else.
· Be continuously conscious of what you hear and what you say.
· Use words wisely. Remember that the client’s brain also strings words together.
· Take each word literally... don’t judge a word without concrete evidence to back it up.
“Discoveries are often made by not following instructions,
by going off the main road, by trying the untried.”
Frank Tyger
