How do you sell without selling part two … 

When you sell without selling you enter the sales communication with such POWERFUL CALM that the prospect KNOWS that you are different, in a good way, to everyone else.

Imagine going to the doctor for a health issue, only to have them use complex language, tech speak and pressure to get you to undergo a critical surgery.  Would you do it?

In my first Sell Without Selling Post, I looked at Buyer Safety, making sure the prospect feels safer with you than they do without you.

In this second post the focus is on Facilitated Challenge.  You can tell the prospect what they need to do … OR you can help them to discover it for themselves.

Challenge-based selling is much more effective than “instruction-based selling”.  With instruction-based selling we say to the prospect, here’s your problem and here’s the solution we have that will fix it.  That type of approach automatically elicits either agreement or disagreement.  It’s a high-risk approach.

Sometimes we adopt a question-based approach. Here we ask the prospect questions about what they want.  There is obvious logic to that but it can also elicit a response of “that’s why I’m talking to you …”

There is a third option.  Challenge-based.  When we challenge the prospect, we facilitate the conversation to help them discover the hidden paradigm shift that they hadn’t realised was possible.  We undertake a conversation that has them asking “Can you help me with that …”

At that point everything changes.  In short, stop selling and start facilitating.  Facilitation is one of the superpower skills of sage-like influence.

Part three is coming, but right now, I’d love to know what your favourite technique is to facilitate a safe challenge-based conversation with your prospect.