So, if you could…

A real challenge when people tell the salesperson some of their problems, issues and dissatisfactions the seller then wants to start telling them about how their product can help. This is good, and important to be able to link your product to the challenges the customer faces, however, psychologically the customer will sit in judgement to decide whether they think it will help. What normally happens is that the customer comes back with a "yeah, I can see why some people would want that but.. " and here comes an objection.

A sales super power is to hold back a moment and instead of telling the customer what your product does to help, pivot to posing it as a question. Utilise the phrase – ‘If you could’ to move the customer into thinking about whether the functionality that your offering would help, and also how it would help. For example"

‘So if you could (insert what the feature does) how would that help’.

What this does it is that it moves the customer from an inquisitive mindset into a solution mindset and they will probably now tell you the benefits of having that feature. Don’t get me wrong the customer knows that you are asking the question because you have something that can do it, but it doesn’t trigger the fight or flight mode in their brain, they are open to consider the benefits, and you are not pushing any product. This demonstrates empathy, collaboration and will continue to build the trust.

Once you have done this a few times, when it comes to you showing your product or service, the customer is already bought into it, and knows the benefits they expect to get from the it. They have sold it to themselves already and your benefits statements can be argued with, as they customer has already told you the benefits!

So when you are doing your discovery and exploring the customers pains and gains, don’t start selling just yet, hold back and instead of saying ‘so if I could..’  take yourself out of the equation, stick with helping the customer and use ‘If you could...’