Widdle Wabbit Lesson

Widdle Wabbit

          A precious little girl walked into a pet shop and asked the owner in the sweetest little lisp, between two missing teeth, “Excuthe me Mither, do you sthell widdle wabbits?”
          As the shopkeeper’s heart melted, he got down on his knees to be on the little girl’s level and started his pitch, “Do you want a widdle white wabbit or a thoft and fuwwy, bwack wabbit, or maybe one like that cute widdle bwown wabbit over there?”
          The little girl put her hands on her knees, leaned forward towards the pet shop owner, and looking him in the eye said, “I don’t think it weally mattows to my python.”
          In sales, we often misinterpret or don’t take the time to explore the motivation behind our prospects’ questions or decisions. We assume we know what the client wants and jump in with our pitch without asking one of the most powerful words in sales…. “why?”
          Had the pet shop owner taken the time to learn why the little girl was asking about wabbits, he probably would not have positioned them as “thoft, fuwwy, or cute”….neither the little girl nor the python cared about those features.
          Do you take the time to uncover why your prospects really make the decisions they make? You may be surprised, and change your presentation accordingly, if you dig a little deeper before you start your presentation.
          The Huthwaite study of more than 60,000 business-to-business sales calls revealed that the ability to ask deep probing questions was the single most important attribute of top performing sales people.
          But most of us ask the same boring questions as our competitors.
           I recently had one client say to me, “If I have one more media rep ask me who my target audience is, I’m going to scream! I want to deal with professionals who understand who my target is and can ask more intelligent questions.”
 
P.S. Click here if you would like me to call you to discuss what our Questioning Skills sales training workshop can do for your team.