First rule of sales – agree with your customer

How to not lose a sale

I was recently contacted by a web development company to see if I wanted to give them any work through outsourcing. They are a company that keeps in contact every few months and I get polite but not very inspiring emails from them. I have no problem with this process as they are working their sales funnel.

Until the most recent email:

I found the line about them getting notifications that I had read the emails a bit obtrusive and it felt like they were spying on me. I don’t mind them having software that indicates when emails are opened, I just don’t think it should be used in sales emails.

The company called me as a follow-up a few days later so I politely explained to them that I found their last email a bit intrusive regarding them getting notifications about me reading their emails. I explained to the salesman about this and this was the magic moment where the sale was lost.

His reply was that other customers liked it and he spent time justifying why they do it, boom, sale gone.

He broke the first rule of selling which is to always agree with your customer. If he had replied with something like, “yeah, it is a bit intrusive isn’t it” or a simple “yes, you are right” then the conversation would have taken a different path. We would have had agreement on something and he could have then talked about what his company can offer me. Instead, it was a sales failure and I won’t use this company again unless they step up their standards of communication.

There are many powerful ‘rules’ of successful selling and the first and possibly the most important is this, always agree with your customer. Even if you don’t 100% agree with them, then you still need to agree. This isn’t manipulation, this is taking your customer’s side so you build trust so they buy from you.

It’s easy to instantly lose a sale, it doesn’t matter if you have built up a rapport with someone or if you consider them to be a definite sell if you disagree with them about virtually anything, the sale will be lost.

This simple thing will make all the difference when you interact with potential customers. So remember:

You will lose a sale if you disagree with your customer.

You will gain trust and massively increase your chances of getting a sale if you agree with your customer.

If you are that company, or if you have overheard your sales people disagreeing with potential customers then I would suggest getting your sales people to do some sales training with a reputable sales company as they are costing your sales. The investment will be worth it.