If you ask leaders “why do salespeople fail?”, you might receive answers like:

1. They don’t make enough sales calls.
2. They don’t make cold calls.
3. They are afraid of rejection.
4. They don’t ask for the order.
5. They don’t challenge the prospect.

Less frequently will hear the response: “they don’t address the prospect’s risk needs.”

What does this mean? A powerful salesperson is one who can open a closed mind. This salesperson can turn a conversation stopper like “I’m good” – manifesting the closed mindset – into an exploratory discussion.

How do we accomplish this? By discovering and showing the prospect how he/she is on a false peak. That we can bring the prospect to a higher peak of well-being.

We do this with Type 3 knowledge – what the prospect doesn’t realize he/she doesn’t know. Type 1 knowledge is what we know, Type 2 is what we know we don’t know; we normally achieve breakthroughs with Type 3 knowledge – teaching the prospect something compelling, a bold vision, which they didn’t realize they didn’t know.

Type 3 knowledge opens the serious conversation, brings the prospect to the point where they are open to being educated. To close the sale, we typically need to address risk aversion.

After all, how does the prospect know your organization will perform consistently or at all, in delivering Type 3 based compelling visions? The salesperson seems reliable enough, but does the salesperson have control over organizational performance? Sometimes, even with a prospect unhappy with the incumbent supplier, the devil we know is seen as better than the devil we don’t know.

Salespeople can easily fall prey to the “rubber band” effect. Type 3 compelling knowledge expands the prospect’s mind, their world of opportunity. If we don’t address risk needs, the mind snaps back like a rubber band – the education is lost.

See, for example the video at this link: https://youtu.be/EqkjJsZWfHw

To understand this idea, consider the following choice:

1. $5,000 sure thing, or
2. We flip a coin; heads you get $10,000, tails you get nothing?

If you are like most people you would prefer the sure thing, the $5,000.

What happens if we reduce the sure thing to $4,000 or we flip a coin, where you get $10,000 or nothing? What about $3,000 vs. the coin toss?

Based on Kahneman’s work on risk aversion – described in his book Thinking Fast and Slow – the average person would accept as little as $2,500 sure thing, to avoid the coin toss.  https://youtu.be/EqkjJsZWfHw

We are by nature risk averse. We like the sure thing.

if we want a prospect to buy/try our product, we need to assuage their sense of risk, reduce their perceived sense of risk.

Risk aversion is a major reason prospects avoid our offer. They see the incumbent solution as the sure thing, our offer as the “coin toss.”

Testimonials can be helpful, particularly if the prospect knows the person providing the testimonial. If you are on a level playing field, and only you provide testimonials, you probably have the edge – everything else being held equal.

If the prospect is relatively happy with the incumbent, you need to address the perceived risk, or the prospect will want a discount – sometimes a deep discount – to address the perceived risk.

Testimonials – in isolation – can be rejected as anecdotal. The way to supercharge testimonials is to link them to your processes.

Here’s a four-step process for addressing risk aversion:

1. Our strong processes (which you demonstrate), deliver
2. Consistent reliable statistics, which allow us to
3. Provide a guarantee, which is
4. Validated by testimonials

Risk is a huge reason salespeople fail. With a proper risk focused program, sales will soar.

Andy Gole discusses risk aversion in greater detail in Chapter 13 of his forthcoming book – Innovate Now: Scale up with 16 Sales Breakthrough Techniques.

Bio

For over 25 years, Andy has worked CEOs, owners and corporate leaders throughout the US, helping them achieve great sales performance, while accelerating their sales process. During his career, he thoroughly researched virtually all of the popular sales processes. All have their strengths, and their shortcomings. From years of testing and evaluation, he developed the Urgency Based Selling® system, a unique approach founded on philosophies which drive and accelerate human behavior.

Andy has an MBA in marketing from NYU and taught small business management and selling skills for 8 years at Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Rothman Institute of Entrepreneurial Studies.

He contributes original content regularly to Forbes.com and Training Industry, as well as other notable business publications.

He is also a frequent speaker on the topics of business development, sales management, and selling process. If you would like to find out more about Andy as a presenter, please visit: https://www.urgencybasedselling.net/solutions/seminars/

For more information on our process, please feel free to visit the website: www.urgencybasedselling.net, or check out this 90 second video on how Urgency Based Selling is different: https://www.urgencybasedselling.net/how-urgency-based-selling-is-different-in-90-seconds/.

Andy is always interested in talking with both business leaders and fellow sales trainers and instructors about trends, best practices, and selling techniques. Feel free to email Andy at info@urgencybasedselling.net.