Episode #033: We Want To Think About It with Amy O’Connor

Jeff: Okay, so you’re right there, you’ve been working with your customer. You love them. They love you back. It’s all good. You ask them the magic question and they say, “We wanna think about it.” Oh, no. What do we do now? Well, let’s get into that on today’s episode of “The Buyer’s Mind.”

Announcer: Welcome to “The Buyer’s Mind,” where we take a closer look deep inside your customer’s decision-making mechanism, to reverse engineer the perfect sales presentation. Now, please welcome your host, Jeff Shore.

Jeff: Well, welcome, everyone, to “The Buyer’s Mind,” where we investigate exactly what’s going on in the brains of those people who are considering a purchase decision. This podcast is all about taking a stroll through the mind of the buyer and about knowing that customer so well that that sales path begins to roll out right in front of you. You can reverse engineer your entire sales presentation when you know the way a customer thinks. I’m Jeff Shore. You can read the bio in the show notes or visit jeffshore.com. While you’re there, make sure you check out the books that might be able to help you to excel in your sales career. As always, joined by our show producer Paul Murphy. Hey, Murph, let me ask you, when you’re out shopping, do you ever say, “I wanna think about it”?

Paul: All the time.

Jeff: All right, so let me ask you this then. What do you mean…what are you most likely to mean when you’re saying, “I wanna think about it”?

Paul: Typically, I want to think about it. I wanna think about what I wanna think about. But I mean, it’s really the question of I’m not sure. I’m usually insecure about something, but I gotta put my finger on what that is.

Jeff: Right. Are you suggesting sometimes you know and sometimes you don’t?

Paul: Most of the time I don’t. But there’s that little voice in the back of your head saying, “Something’s not right,” and I can’t figure out what that is.

Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. And the fact is that “I wanna think about it” can mean a lot of things. It might just mean I wanna think about it. But boy, there is so much more that is going on and we’ve gotta try and figure out, as sales professionals, what do we do to help our customers so that perhaps we can prevent them from saying that in the first place? And not just saying that but feeling that. If we give them enough confidence, then perhaps we can prevent that from happening. But then what do we do when it does happen? And that’s what we’re gonna get into today. And it leads us into our quote, and I think it’s a very relevant and very heady quote from Martin Luther, who once said, “How soon ‘not now’ becomes ‘never’.” “How soon ‘not now’ becomes ‘never’.” And when we don’t act now, oftentimes we find that we don’t act ever.

The fact of the matter is that there’s a lot of risk when we’re trying to make a purchase decision. That’s true of purchase decisions. But this idea that “How soon ‘not now’ becomes ‘never’,” it’s true in our lives as well. Oftentimes, there are things that we are supposed to do and we tell ourselves, “Not now.” Only to find that “not now” soon becomes never. And when it comes to things that really matter in our lives, I just wanna encourage you don’t let that happen. Live the life you were supposed to live.

We wanna let you know that the podcast is brought to you by our good friends over at HomeStreet Bank. This is our show sponsor. It’s also my lender of choice. I used HomesStreet the last time I purchased a home and it was the smoothest real estate transaction I have ever had. Professional, dependable, great rates, great people. If you are a real estate professional and you want your customer taken care of by the best, make sure that you connect with HomeStreet Bank. You can go to homestreetbank.com to learn more. That’s homestreetbank.com.

Let’s give you our sales tip of the day, and it is to talk as if the decision has already been made. Let me tell you what I mean by that. When you’re working with your customer, you can talk in the language of “If they purchase.” But it’s so much easier for them if you talk in the language of, “When they already have purchased.” If you get them into that mindset, it helps them to try on that product for size. It helps them to step into their future, and to visualize it and not just understand how it’s going to work but to feel it and to live in it for a little bit.

So if I said to a customer, you know, “When you wear this ring on a special occasion, you’ll be feeling like…” or “When you get home every day, you’re really going to appreciate…” or “You’ll love the fact that this car is gonna keep you out of the shop and on the road because it’s just so great in the way that it’s built,” and in all of these ways, we’re speaking into their future. We’re getting the customer thinking as if the decision has already been made. Don’t think about if, think about when. The more that you are couching your conversation into the language of the inevitable, the easier it is for your customer to try that on for size.

Before we get to our interview, I want to tell you about an opportunity here, and that’s to be involved in our 4:2 Academy. Our 4:2 Formula Academy, this is an intensive training program specifically for real estate sales professionals, where we’re using modern selling strategies and skills just for today’s buyers, just for today’s market. The 4:2 Formula is the core real estate principle that we talk about at Shore Consulting, but it’s gonna give you several days, and actually spread out over the course of an entire quarter, a program that’ll allow you to just transform your presentation. We’ve put so many people through the 4:2 Formula Academy, always with tremendous results. You can go to jeffshore.com/events to learn more about the 4:2 Formula Academy.

All right, let’s move on to our interview here. I’m thrilled to have back on this show just an amazing thinker, a great speaker, a great trainer, and just a really good human being. She’s on my staff, but she’s a good friend and she challenges me so much with the way she thinks about sales. Every time we get off the phone or we’ll sit there over dinner or lunch and we’ll just talk for hours on the subject. And I’m always highly motivated by the time I’m done, and sufficiently challenged. Welcome back to the show, Amy O’Connor. Amy, how you doing?

Amy: Hey, Jeff. I’m good. How are you?

Jeff: Good, good, good. You know, I thought we would have you back to hit on one thing in particular. And I know it’s a specialty subject of yours and it’s something that virtually every sales person is gonna have to deal with. And I mean, like, in their first five minutes of being on the job. Do you know where I’m going with this, Amy?

Amy: I think I know where you’re going with this, yes.

Jeff: So we’re gonna talk about “We need to think about it.” We’re gonna talk about the customer that says, “We need to think about it.” You good with that, Amy?

Amy: I love that. I love this subject. Yeah.

Jeff: All right. So let’s back it up here just a little bit because I think, for our audience here, yeah, most of them have been through a sales training of some type or another, and when we hear this phrase “We wanna think about it,” there’s kind of an old school training response. So let’s start there and walk us through that.

Amy: The old school training response is it is quite interesting because it’s quite aggressive. I don’t know that it’s very sensitive to the buyer. But what typically sales have been, or sales people have been trained to do is when they hear “We need to think about it,” what they typically are trained to say back is, “What do you need to think about?” In this very matter of fact, almost aggressive tone, “What do you need to think about?”

Jeff: Yeah, there’s sort of a fighting stance to that follow-up question.

Amy: There is. And what’s interesting is even if the conversation has gone really well up until that point and the buyer actually really likes the sales person, all of a sudden, they don’t like you so much anymore. You’re looking back and they’re saying, “What do you mean what do I need to think about? How about none of your business?” Because they’re kind of like, “Hey, I liked you, and I don’t like you anymore.”

Jeff: Let’s talk about that response because, you know, look, a sales person might very well be saying, “So what do you need to think about?” And in their heart, it might feel like, “Okay, tell me what you need to think about,” but it comes off to the buyer as, “So what do you need to think about?” So, why? What do you suppose is going on in the customers’ minds? And maybe you put yourself in the consumer position when you hear a sales person say, “So what do you need to think about?”

Amy: You know, I think that you’re right. I think that, for the most part, their intention is good. But like I remind salespeople, it’s not your intention that matters. It’s how the information is received. And even if your intentions are right but it comes across to the buyer as aggressive or pushy or salesy, you’re gonna fall flat here. So, even if you’re truly and genuinely wanting to uncover what’s their inhibitor, “What’s holding you back? I really wanna know. I really wanna help you,” but that comes in a package that doesn’t sound favorable, the buyer’s just gonna shut down on you. They’re not gonna give you the information that you need.

Jeff: Yeah. I want to get into the discussion of how we respond to “We need to think about it.” But before we go there, I want to chat a little bit about how we can avoid getting into that situation in the first place because one of the things that we see just in regards to the way that the buying mind works, is that there are decisions that are gonna be made all throughout the process. And we know that some of those decisions are conscious and some of those decisions are non-conscious. Right? We talk about this all the time on “The Buyer’s Mind,” the amount of time that the customer spends processing in a non-conscious way. It doesn’t mean that they’re not making decisions. It’s just that it’s not in their conscious mind where they’re making those decisions.

So if the sales professional is not asking agreement questions all throughout the process that elevate these considerations into the conscious mind, then the customer is making this series of non-conscious decisions. Now by the time that we’re asking, “Well, would you like to buy this?” the customer now has to sort of race through their brain and assimilate all of these non-conscious decisions, bring them up to the conscious level, and then figure out “Now does that make sense?” And to me, that sounds like a massive amount of cognitive strain to which a customer is probably going to say, “I need to think about it.”

Amy: I need to think about it. You’re right.

Jeff: It’s not surprising.

Amy: And you say it all the time, Jeff. Easy equals right. Easy equals right. We can avoid this in large part if we will do exactly what you’re saying, and allow them to make conscious, easy, small decisions all throughout the process. And we do that through small closing question. And if we can sort of get ahead of that for the buyer, then once we ask that final closing question, they’ve already thought through everything because we’ve been stepping them all the way through.

Jeff: You know what’s funny about that? If I’ve not been asking those agreement questions and I say, “Well, would you like to make this yours? Would you like to purchase?” when they say, “Well, we need to think about it,” if I just shot back, “Well, what do you need to think about?” if they’re being honest, they would probably say, “Well, we need to think about what we need to think about.” I mean, really, that’s really what’s going on in their brain. Now, if they said that, we’d go, “Oh, great, one of those guys.” But no, they’re not lying. They need to think about what they need to think about because we haven’t given them the opportunity to assimilate that all throughout the process. So it really starts with our technique if we’re not careful. So we get to that point. They say, “We need to think about it.” Let’s talk about some strategies. What are we gonna do now as sales professionals?

Amy: Well, I think we wanna make sure that we’re understanding this from the position of the buyer. When they get to this point in the sales process, how are they feeling? And if we can’t connect with that, we’re gonna run into technique problems. We have to think about in any big buying decision, the buyer has a mix of emotions going on. They’re probably a little scared. They’re probably a little nervous. Maybe they’re uncertain about their own decision-making process. But there’s also a blend of excitement and they really wanna do this. So when we hear that “We need to think about it,” the first thing that we want to do is show a little empathy for what’s happening with them in this moment. We want to engage emotionally with them.

Jeff: So when you’re talking about engaging emotionally, I assume you’re referencing the idea that you don’t wanna stand on opposite sides here as if it’s a battle. We wanna come alongside that customer and let them know, “I can stand in your shoes and appreciate where you’re coming from.”

Amy: Yeah, we wanna be able to say back to them very genuinely because we’ve been there too. And I’m sure we’ve all said, “Hey, I need to think about this.” So when we hear that from our buyer, the first response back should be something like, “Hey, I get it. It’s a big deal. There’s a lot of variables. I understand that this is a big decision for you. I support that. Hey, I might even be a little concerned if you didn’t want to think about this.” I think that that helps that buyer breathe that sigh of relief that, “Okay, what I’m feeling is normal. The salesperson understands. They’re still my friend. They still wanna help me.”

Jeff: Well, what’s interesting there is that if you go to…let’s suppose you’ve built a great relationship with this customer, you’re exceedingly coffee worthy as we like to say, you’ve had a great time, suddenly customer says, “We wanna think about it,” and we respond with “Well, what are you gonna think about?” Now your customer’s standing there going, “Where did that come from? I want the other guy. Where’s the other guy? Where did he go?” But what you’re saying is, if we do this, if we engage with them emotionally and show some empathy in this process, then what we’re really doing is complementing everything we’ve been trying to do for the entire length of the sales conversation.

Amy: Yeah. And Jeff, to reference back something that you talk about quite a bit, it’s that taking the hat off right? I’m the salesperson. I have my salesperson hat on. You’re the buyer. You have your buyer hat on. Take the hats off and how about we talk to people like people? We know that anytime we’re making a big buying decision, whether it’s us making it or the person that we’re speaking to, we know that there’s a range of emotions and why don’t we just speak to them like the person that they are and just acknowledge those emotions that they’re having and appreciate them for what they are?

Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. It’s consistent with everything we’ve tried to do. So our first step here is we’re going to engage them emotionally. We’re gonna show a little empathy that we get it, we’re on the same team and we’re coming alongside them. What’s the next thing we wanna do?

Amy: Then I would say you wanna recap the sales conversation up into that point. You know, going back to what you said just a couple of minutes ago, Jeff, about having everything in the conscious mind and reminding them of the decisions that they’ve already made, and just making sure that we as the salesperson haven’t missed anything. So after we have engaged emotionally, I would say that the next step that you wanna do is say, “And, you know, before you leave, if you don’t mind, I’d love to just sort of go back through what we’ve been talking about today. I just wanna make sure that I haven’t missed anything.”

And that’s when we go back and recap their mission. What are they looking for? What are they trying to fix that doesn’t work with what they currently have? You know, why did they come in in the first place? And then recapping how we have tackled some of their issues throughout this process and how we have found some of the things that really do work for them. And just make sure that everything is coming into that conscious mind, that, “Here’s where you started when you walked in. Here’s where we’ve been, here’s what we’ve done, here’s where I think we are. Do I have that right? Have I missed anything?”

Jeff: What’s your ultimate goal when you’re doing this, Amy, when you’re looking at it and recapping? In a best case scenario, what would come out of this part of the conversation?

Amy: The ultimate is a buyer to say, “Yes, you’re right. I came in. I needed this. I had this issue. We solved my issue. We found my wants. We found my needs.” And I want them, at this part of the conversation, to go, “Yeah, no, I do feel pretty good about this. This is all pretty much thinking up.” And I’m trying to tee them up for where I’m really trying to go to next in the conversation, which is if they do need to think about it, well that means that there is something that is still holding them back from making a decision. There is some sort of inhibitor. And I want to lead them through that process to bring to the surface, “Well, if all of these things are matching up and all of these things have gone well up until this point, I wanna gently be able to then at the end of that piece of the conversation, simply look back and say, ‘Well, it sounds like that all works for you, but clearly there’s something that’s causing you a little anxiety here or maybe a little hesitation, and I wanna make sure that I’m helping you with that. What’s still holding you back from making a buying decision at this point?'”

Jeff: Part of this, I think, has to do with the emotional intelligence of the salesperson because if we’re not able to read our customers well at this critical point of the process, we’re probably not gonna serve them all that well. But great salespeople, they’re great sales counselors. They play that counseling role, and counselors are so in tune to the people that they are counseling at any given time. And they see the nuance and they see the body language and they’re not afraid to say, “Talk to me. What’s going on?”

I mean, I remember once, years ago in a counseling session, and I said something. I don’t even remember what I said or what the subject matter was. But the counselor I was talking to just threw up her hands, hit the brakes and said, “Stop. There’s a flinch. There was a tell. There’s something going on here that we need to explore.” And it caused me to stop long enough to really think it through. And it was a breakthrough. How important is it? We’re trying to teach technique here, but there’s something that goes deeper than technique. It’s really having that desire to understand the customer on a deeply emotional level.

Amy: It is, and it’s that offer of service. I mean, you have two choices here. When you hear “We need to think about it,” you could say, “Well, of course you do. You need to just go home and you need to think about that. You call me when you’ve made a decision.” And when you do that, that’s a yielding behavior. And you’re not serving your customer. You know at that point there’s something that’s causing them angst or anxiety or nervousness, and you just sent them through the door to go fix it by themselves. But if I’m willing to take on that counselor role like you suggest, then that means that I have to genuinely care.

I have to know that there’s something that’s causing you concern, and I have to slow down the process. I have to offer a level of service that says, “I know you wanna think about it. I wanna be able to help you. There’s clearly something that’s making this not quite something you’re ready to decide on right this second. What is it? What’s still giving you some anxiety here?” And you have to express that in a way that lets the buyer know that you really do care and that you really do wanna help.

Jeff: This is so critical. This is such an important part of the conversation because what we’re really attacking here is the motive behind the technique. So if you’re looking at it and you’re thinking to yourself, “Well, you know, I need to…” If somebody says, “What do you need to think about?” What’s my motive here? My motive is to try and keep my sale alive. That’s what I’m trying to do. If my motive is just to try and say, “I don’t have a sale this week. I gotta get this one over the finish line,” then you’re acting in your own best interest. But if you’re looking at it and you’re saying, “Look, you would not have asked them to purchase in the first place if you didn’t think this was right for them.”

So we’re not talking about being slick or manipulative or tricky here. We’re talking about serving the customer by helping them to break through the barriers that are imposed in their own brain. So if your motive is right, then coming back and really getting the customer to think deeply about this and understand your customer on a deep level has nothing to do with the sales report. It has nothing to do with your sales manager. It has nothing to do with your commission. It has everything to do with your appropriate and important role in solving that customer’s problem. So that motive has gotta be absolutely critical. If we don’t have our head on straight there, then the best you can do is come up with a manipulative technique. And I know you, Amy, you’re not into that.

Amy: No, I’m not into that. You know, I always say, “The right thing is always the right thing.” And that’s why when we’re going through this technique, I just believe so deeply in it from the customer’s perspective. They want to work through it. At the end of the day, the customer wants to buy. They just needed to be okay. And so, when you’re stepping them through this process, that’s what you’re helping them do. They’re stepping through their own mental journey and their own mental decisions here to arrive somewhere where they feel safe. And that’s what we’re trying to create, is that environment where they feel safe to sort of go, “Well, I’ll tell you what it is. I’m still struggling with…” That’s when we know that we’ve achieved our purpose here.

Jeff: Well, and that’s very much like the counselor. Until the counselor hears me say, “Listen, the bottom line is I have a lot of pent up anger towards my father,” or whatever it is, until we get to that point, “The counselor can’t help me anyway,” that’s what we’re talking about right here. We’re just trying to get the customer to verbalize. But what I find interesting here, the way that I’m hearing you say it, Amy, is that it’s not just about verbalizing it to me. It’s about verbalizing it to themselves.

Amy: Yeah, we see that. Sometimes they just become so overwhelmed in the process that their bailout comment is, “I need to think about this.” And what they mean is, “I’m stressed out.” And then they leave and they don’t even know exactly what it was. So if I can help them identify it in their own mind, I mean, we’ve come a long way already if they can just verbalize it out loud to say, “Well, this is the obstacle.” Now they can get clarity on that. And a lot of times they can solve their own obstacle. We don’t even have to do it.

Jeff: Right. Listen, even if they don’t buy at that moment and they do go away and they have lunch or the next day, whatever it is, if we’ve done our jobs right, we’ve isolated for them what specifically they wanna think about. That is a much easier buying journey than to try and say, “We need to think about the entirety of this whole purchase decision.” You wanna talk about cognitive strain, that’s where it gets tough. So if nothing else, we’ve isolated it into that one specific moment. But let’s suppose here that there’s nothing we can do. Sometimes customers just do need a little bit of time. That’s never what I’m thinking going in, but at some point, you know, they’re going to walk away. Now, what do we do? Now, how do we keep this sale alive rather than just saying, “Okay, well, take as much time as you need and call me when you have an answer”?

Amy: This is one of my favorite topics. I actually get pretty passionate about the topic of follow-up, partially because I think it’s a way that salespeople can stand out above all other salespeople. What I find is traditionally salespeople just don’t do a great job at follow-up. And so, if the buyer, if I’ve walked them through everything and they just…you know, they get to that point where, yeah, they actually do need to go. And we’ve isolated, you know, their concerns but they need to work through it. What I want to make sure that I’m doing is that I’m staying engaged with that buyer and I’m reengaging quickly. And the key word here is quickly. I don’t want the buyer to leave and then spiral out of control, to make whatever they’re thinking about much more difficult than it needs to be.

So, again comes that offer of service where I might say something back to the buyer that sounds a little something like, “Listen, I know that you want to think about it, and I respect your opinion. But let’s do this. It’s 2:00 now. As soon as you get in your car, I’m sure you’re gonna start thinking this through and you’re probably gonna ask questions. What if I give you a call, say, at around 6:00, just to check in, just to see what’s come up between now and then? I certainly don’t want you spending the whole night, you know, struggling with any questions that have come up. I’ll just check in and see how you’re doing, see if there’s anything I can answer for you. Does that sound like a good plan?”

Now I’ve given them the opportunity to accept my follow-up. Now, everybody knows what happens next. They know why it’s happening, they know when it’s happening, and everybody feels good about it.

Jeff: This is such a huge issue, especially with somebody that you’ve taken this far into the process, when too much time goes by. Well, you tell me. What happens to a customer? Because we’ve done a lot of research on this and one of the things that we see is that the longer somebody takes to make a decision, the less likely it is that they’re gonna buy. Why is that the case?

Amy: It’s true because their emotional engagement tends to fall off. Or we like to call it emotional altitude, Jeff, as you know. And what happens is, people need a certain level of emotion to make an emotional purchase, right? Seems pretty logical. So you need a certain level of emotion to make these purchases. But the farther you get away from that initial visit, that initial interaction, your engagement, your emotional engagement starts to wane, and it wanes very, very quickly. So what happens is, when they leave and life starts to happen, they forget about you. And they forget about your product, they forget about your service, they forget about you as a salesperson. And all of a sudden we reengage with them three days later, and maybe they don’t even remember their name. They certainly don’t remember how happy they were when they were standing there considering a buying decision.

Jeff: Right. Yeah. This is so important. That concept of emotional altitude and what happens to a customer’s emotional altitude when it’s at its highest, when they’re interacting with the product and thinking about what their life is gonna look like. And then when it’s at its lowest, which is usually not when they’re considering price, it’s usually at its lowest after they’ve left and they’ve simply forgotten. The emotion that was ascribed to that product kind of goes away. And so, when we insert ourselves back into the conversation very, very quickly, then we also give that next little rush of emotional adrenaline. We raise that emotional altitude back up. But the longer we go in the process without making a decision, the less likely it is we’ll decide.

And listen, we’ve both been there, Amy. You and I both have in common we like to shop. I get into shopping moods and I like what I like. Right? I’m not the biggest bargain hunter in the world. I like what I like. And that means that from time to time you and I have to make decisions that we’re gonna spend a little money on something even though we hadn’t planned on it. And I know, for me, if I, in a fit of responsibility, I look at it and I just go, “This is too much money. I’m going to walk away and I’m going to think about it,” the chances that I’m gonna buy it actually reduced dramatically by the time I’ve walked away. But if I’m making the decision right there, “This is right for me. I want it. I don’t care about the money,” it’s actually quite easy.

Amy: It is. And then I’ll descend that purchase to the debt. That’s the purchase where I’m like, “No, no, I didn’t need a twelfth dress this month,” to my husband. Because I’ve made the purchase decision and so now I feel the need to justify that fiercely. But you’re right. If I walk out and I don’t buy the dress and I get to the end of, you know, my shopping evening and I get to my car and I go, “Oh yeah, there was that other dress.” But I’ve forgotten about it at that point. And that only happens sometimes within the span of an hour, two hours.

Jeff: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and this speaks to the idea of why it’s so important that we get that level of commitment because…and psychologists refer to this as the endowment effect. We esteem something more highly after we have committed to that purchase. So you’re right, we will come up with that justification. We will come up with that story, not to others, but to ourselves, as to why that makes sense. And when we do that, we just feel better about it. There’s nothing manipulative about it. It’s just what we do. That’s the way that our brains work. But, the longer we step aside from something, the more the emotional altitude drains off and then it’s very, very difficult to make that purchase decision.

Such a great conversation, on such a very difficult topic when we hear about this “We need to think about it.” And let’s just wrap it up here, Amy. I want to just go back to the mindset of the salesperson because what you often can almost imagine is that if you could read the thoughts of your typical salesperson, when a customer says, ”We want to think about it,” there are a whole lot of potential negative thoughts that could come into the brain, along the lines of, “Oh no, not this guy. I hate this.” Or it’s, “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. I’m about to lose the sale.” What would you say to a salesperson in regards to the healthy mindset to adopt when you hear the words “We wanna think about it,” is what?

Amy: The healthy mindset to adopt when you hear “We need to think about it,” is that there actually is something that they need to think about. And your goal is to uncover that, to bring it to the surface, both for your clarity and for the buyer’s clarity. That’s how you serve the buyer.

Jeff: Yeah, if they had nothing to think about…there’s actually a word for somebody who has nothing to think about. And we call them…

Amy: Non-buyer.

Jeff: Non-buyer. You show me a buyer who doesn’t have anything to think about and I’ll show you a non-buyer. Fantastic conversation. Really, really great stuff. I just dig when you and I sit down and we rap about sales theory anyway. But now we get to do that with all of our friends. That was fun.

Amy: It was fun. Thank you so much.

Jeff: Talk to you next time. Amy O’Connor, everybody. Well, we’ve been talking here about the “I want to think about it,” the “We want to think about it,” what we do about that. But I want to just reset this, and I talked about this in the conversation with Amy, but it bears repeating here. We’ve gotta ask the question, what are the motives? Am I doing this for me, or am I doing this for them? Am I doing it for the commission, or am I doing it to change my customer’s life to improve their life? Because here’s the idea. This I know about every single customer who buys anything at all, and that is that they buy for all the same reason. They buy because they have a desire to improve their life. That is the motivation for anyone who buys anything.

Well, as an extension, if they buy with the desire to improve their life, you know what that means? The sooner they buy, the sooner their life improves. So if I’m looking at it and I’m saying, “I’m not trying to sell a product, I’m looking to try and improve my customer’s life.” Look, if you don’t think that your product will improve your customer’s life, I beg you, go find another product because you’re not acting with integrity in the way you’re approaching the sale. But if you believe that this is right for the customer, that changes your motive. The sooner they buy, the sooner their life improves. That’s what we do in sales. We are in the business of life improvement. So think about it along those lines. Get your motive right. This isn’t for you, this isn’t for your company, certainly not for your commission. This is for your customer. Sales as service.

Well, there you go. Another episode of “The Buyer’s Mind.” If you’re enjoying the podcast, make sure you subscribe to that. Would really appreciate that. Leave a review if you wouldn’t mind too. But that’s another wrap on our podcast. Hope you enjoyed it. You can find everything you need at jeffshore.com. But until next time, my friends, go out there and change someone’s world.