Working In Sales…..Make A Proportional Offer

This video will help you understand why making a proportional offer is so important.  Too often those of us in sales start by trying to hit a home run.  Instead, doesn’t it just make more sense to just make an offer that you’ve earned enough trust to see the answer by yes?  Watch this video to learn what making a proportional offer is so important……and, make sure you sign up for our newsletter where you’ll get notifications of any interesting happenings and content that appear on our blog, podcasts and videos we produce.

Transcript:

Hi, thanks a lot for stopping by Ask Josh Patrick.

Today, we’re going to talk about that I think is really important in the sales process. And that’s making a proportional offer to the amount of trust that you’ve earned. You know, too often, people go too fast into making this huge proposal for a round of stuff they want you to do before they’ve built enough trust with you to make sure it’s the right thing for you to be doing.

Now, one of my favorite books in the world is one of five books I think all business owners should be reading is Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port. In there, Michael talks about making a proportional offer to the amount of trust that you’ve earned. And believe me, this is a big deal.

I want to tell you a story. I recently signed up for an online educational program. One of those things was click here if you want more information and I got a call from their sales guy. Now, the sales guy started on this conversation with me and almost immediately, tried to move me into a program that costs $100,000 a year. Now, I didn’t know if these people were honest or dishonest but I can tell you one thing that happened with me, as soon as he said “$100,000 a year”, my trust in their authenticity within this company went down to zero. And after he did the $100,000 you know where he went to their $25,000-program. I had told the guy, “I don’t know if you guys are any good or not good but frankly $100,000 offer was ridiculous.” So, he goes and tries to do the hard sell on $25,000. He tries to guilt me into buying this program.

Well, I can tell you, with me that doesn’t work very well and I bet the same is true for you. So, it’s really important that when you’re talking with somebody, you make them a proportional offer. So here’s something that might make some sense for you, or at least it makes sense to me. Here’s how I try to work with folks like you. The first thing I want to do is I want to establish some credibility with you. I want to build trust. Now, I’m hoping that this video does a little bit of that. It builds a little bit of trust. You know, this guy sounds pretty reasonable. He’s a little bit cranky every once in a while but frankly I might like to work with him because he seems to be telling me the truth about what’s true for him.

Now, if I came back to you and I said, you know, we had one conversation. I said, “I want to sell you something that’s $50,000 a year. We do have a $50,000 a year program.” I can almost promise you’re going to say no. I need to help you get an experience of working with us first so you can build trust.

Now, maybe that $50,000 offer is the right thing for you to do but it’s not the right thing for you to do the first time you talk to us. That is absolutely for sure. So what I want you to do is, I want you to watch a couple of videos. I want you to read some of our blog posts. I want you to listen to some of my podcasts, download some of our free e-books and find out if it sounds like we’re somebody you might want to have a conversation with. You might then want to go do one of our lower cost offerings and then say, “Okay, we’ll start there and see how it goes.” If that goes well, you might say, “Okay let’s find out what the real problem is and the real opportunities we have in our business.” Then the big offer might make some sense. But not to everybody, just for a few people. And along the way, I want you to keep coming back. I want you to keep building trust. So, that’s what my goal is.

Here’s my question to you. “What’s your goal? What do you want to do? How are you going to build trust with your clients, with your customer? How are you going to build them through that list of building trust and reliability and competence along the way so people know that you’re the real deal and not a fake?”

So start with a low offer. Build some trust. Start with a free offer. Build some trust. Get a little bit of money. Build some trust. Do what you say you’re going to do when you said you’re going to do it. Those are all good things.

So, here’s what I think is a good idea. You need to ask some questions whether it’s online, or on the telephone, or in-person to really find out what are the important things that your customers need to have done that you can provide and you can help them have solutions for. Only make offers that are proportional to the trust you’ve earned.

I’ve said this a few times already and I might say it a few times before we got done today. But the fact is if you don’t do that, you’re going to have some challenges. You’re going to be like me and say, “What’s with this company? Why do they even sign up for the cheap program? This sounds like a pretty scummy organization. Well, it turns out they weren’t. They just had a really bad sales guy who needed to have retraining or better yet get him out of the company. This guy was no good for you.

So, speaking of building trust, which we’re doing, here’s what I like you to do. Why don’t you sign up for our newsletter? When you saw this video, there’s a popup box that gave you an offer and there’s an offer below here where you can also sign up for our newsletter. Just click on the button and you’re going to get some of my curated content. You’re going to get my best ideas and an occasional offer, something that you might find interesting. It’s not going to cost you a lot of money, maybe it’s even free. I have this free audio CD which I send out to folks. And if you like that, I’m happy to send it to you. But the point is here, I want you to learn a little bit more about us so we can build trust. You can be part of our community. You can join the carmudgeon’s community. You can be cranky too. I give you permission for that.

So, thanks a lot for coming by today. I’m Josh Patrick. You’re at Ask Josh Patrick. And guess what? I’m the head carmudgeon here. Thanks so much.