Facts vs. Assumptions

A funny thing happens as salespeople become more and more experienced with their company or product. They also become less and less effective.

Yes, you read that correctly. Salespeople often becomes less effective with the more experience that they gain.

At first glance, it would seem that the exact opposite should be true. Yet, it still happens time and time again. How can this be?

The simple fact is, as we gain more knowledge, we stop feeling a need to make decisions based on facts and begin to make more assumptions.

When we become intimately familiar with something, we begin to mistakenly assume that the customer likewise understands what we’re talking about. We assume that every customer problem is the same as one of the others we’ve already faced before. We start to imagine that our customers are complaining about price just because the competition has launched a new price schedule. And, we also suspect that because of our experience, we know more about how we can help our customers than they do.

These automatic assumptions can often cause major problems down the road. Salespeople who do business based on assumptions will almost always fail. Consider that an assumption has an equal chance of being right or wrong…how effective can a salesperson be if they are only right half the time?

At this point, you probably get my point. An experienced salesperson or team who lets their experience get to their head will be less effective than a newer salesperson who makes decisions based on facts.

Remember that your prospect doesn’t buy for your reasons; they only buy for their own. Not to mention that because your clients all have individual needs and issues, it’s very difficult to assume your way to creating success for them.

So, how can you find out what reasons will motivate each new prospect to buy? There’s only one way I know of, and that’s by asking questions – not providing information. You must allow yourself to continuously learn, grow and expand. You gained experience by making the right decisions, don’t take these decisions for granted because you’ve achieved a certain level of success.

Simply put – you must always operate your business based on facts, not assumptions. <– Click To Tweet

You always want absolute clarity with the decisions you make. Unfortunately, gaining clarity is just not possible when you operate your business and sales on assumptions.

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