Wouldn’t it be wonderful for a prospect to accurately and honestly lay out all of their issues for you in your first meeting? This means no more seemingly-perfect deals to disappear, no more “perfect matches” to end with unreciprocated phone calls, and best of all, no more “What went wrong?”
The first part of any sales training program should teach you that your questions never end when the prospect first tells you what they believe to be their “problem.” When you refuse to take a prospect’s “diagnosis” at face-value, you’ve begun the process of accurately diagnosing their real problems.
That diagnosis, as outlined in Sandler Rule #38, is precisely why salespeople are paid for their services. A good sales professional listens to the prospect, probes further into their immediate symptoms and uncovers the prospect’s true pain-oftentimes revealing the actual problem to a prospect who couldn’t diagnose it on their own. When you treat their first symptoms with some skepticism, you’ll find that the real problem will later reveal itself-but only to those who know that the diagnosis doesn’t begin and end with “What seems to be the problem?”
