I Don't Push It On Them

One of my sales coaching clients - I'll call him Mark - and I were having a discussion last week about the roadblocks he was experiencing trying to sell his product more successfully. He gave me permission to describe our conversation in this post.

In an effort to understand the dynamics surrounding Mark's challenges, I asked him many questions. During coaching sessions, I always look for information that raises a red flag: something unusual, something that indicates a blind spot in the seller's perception, or something that makes alarm bells go off in my mind.

I had one of those red flags raised when Mark was explaining how he worked with his prospects selling high end big ticket retail products.

"If I don't feel our product is right for the customer, I don't push it on them," Mark blurted.

With red flag raised, I started asking Mark questions about this idea. My first question was, "Mark, I understand you don't like to push product on your customer when you don't think it's right for that particular customer, but when do you think it's perfectly okay to push your product on a customer?"

Mark gave a long and rambling answer having to do with respect for the customer, pushiness in selling, needing to make sales goals, management's expectations, how it's fun to sell to a customer that likes your product, when a customer should buy a particular product for his own good, and so on. But he never really answered the question.

"So Mark, when do you think it's perfectly okay to push your product on a customer," I asked again.

Silence. Mark was thinking. That's always a good sign in a sales coaching session.

"I'm not sure," he replied.

So we talked it through at some length. I shared with Mark that I thought it was never appropriate to push product on a customer. That means when the salesperson doesn't think the product is a good fit for the customer, and it also means when the salesperson does think a product is a good fit for the customer.

I told Mark that having a push mentality in selling will always throw you off course, not only because when you push, you can't guide, and when you push, you can't lead. It also throws the salesperson off course because a push mentality requires a salesperson to determine when it's okay to push and when it's okay not to push. By taking pushing out of the selling equation, a salesperson doesn't have to make this determination.

Mark agreed and vowed to take product pushing out of all future sales interactions.

Then I had one more angle to discuss with Mark relative to his "If I don't feel our product is right for the customer I don't push it on them" statement. I started here:

"Speaking theoretically, what if a customer determines your product is a good fit for him, but you don't believe it is?"

Mark talked about the need to guide the prospect in the right way, being true to your own beliefs, and so on.

I counseled Mark: "The customer's conclusions are always more important than your conclusions. So if a customer believes product X or feature X is a better fit or most important, even though you [think you] know product Y or feature Y is more beneficial, you have to sell the customer what he wants, otherwise you're letting your biases get in the way of serving your clients, and in this way, you're limiting your sales."

This was a stunning revelation for Mark. He had always believed one of the most important selling functions was to guide his customers down the correct path, but he realized he hadn't been guiding, but had instead been steering, and that he couldn't ultimately determine what the correct path was anyway.

To review, here's what I believe Mark learned in our coaching session:

1. "Pushing" a product or service is not part of a sales representative's job description, so don't waste any time or energy doing it or thinking about when you should do it.

2. Guiding a customer is good. Steering a customer is bad. Let the customer decide what's a good product fit and then support the customer's decision.

If you like this post (or don't) please leave a comment. Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers Sales Training. He works with companies and individuals who sell to consumers in B2C, retail, in-home selling, and the financial, real estate, and insurance markets.

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