Winning a prospect over to your way of thinking can make the difference between earning their business or not. The question is, how to do it without telling them they\u2019re wrong and sending them running. Early in my career I came across a principle that helps me through these difficult situations.<\/p>\n
Years ago, I met with a potential client who had a growing insurance agency. He was at that stage where his number one challenge was hiring new advisors and support staff and doing it all without spending himself into bankruptcy.<\/p>\n
He had a big need for business planning help, but when I first met with him he shocked me by saying he didn\u2019t believe in wasting time on a plan. When I tried to point out how planning would help him make decisions he shot back with, \u201cI\u2019m intuitive. I make decisions on the fly. How can I plan for what will happen three years from now when I can\u2019t predict what will happen next week?\u201d<\/p>\n
There was no way I was going to earn his business unless I could change his basic assumptions about planning.<\/p>\n
I knew that arguing or telling him he was wrong would only make him more defensive and closed to my ideas. If I was going to be able to help him, I needed to find a way to expand his thinking without confrontation.<\/p>\n
Luckily there\u2019s an effective way to do this that many successful salespeople do naturally. It\u2019s called the Ransberger Pivot. The pivot is a method invented by Ray Ransberger and Marshall Fritz, an American libertarian activist, for opening a useful discussion with people who don\u2019t agree with your position\u2014without telling them they\u2019re wrong.<\/p>\n
The idea behind it is pretty simple: don\u2019t argue or confront\u2014listen. Listen to and understand your prospect\u2019s objections, then find a common ground between their position and yours. When you reveal the common ground you take their ego out of the equation and create a platform from which to build.<\/p>\n
In my case I built common ground by agreeing that the future is uncertain, especially in a volatile industry like financial services. And no one can predict exactly where they\u2019ll be a few years out. When I saw him nodding I knew we could start to go in the same direction.<\/p>\n
I agreed that plans are not crystal balls that reveal all about the future\u2014instead I think of them as a way to define the future you want so you can turn it into reality.<\/p>\n
I could see from the look on his face that for him this was a new way of looking at planning. And that it had some appeal.<\/p>\n
Time for one last build.<\/p>\n
I said, \u201cWhen you clearly define where you want to go, it\u2019s easier to choose the actions you need to take today to get you there. Plans don\u2019t predict the future, they create it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now our common ground had expanded to include my position on planning. We\u2019d gone from being on opposite sides of the issue to agreement. And from there we were able to start talking about planning his future, rather than arguing about the value of planning.<\/p>\n
The next week we started developing the plan for his agency\u2014he\u2019s been a client ever since.<\/p>\n
Instead of telling my prospect I disagreed with his ideas about business planning, I did the opposite. I found a way to agree with what he thought, which gave us a base to work from. Then I built on that common ground by adding points that were consistent with his thinking, but that edged him toward my position. Without ever saying he was wrong I was able to win him over to my side and close the business without confrontation.<\/p>\n
Next time you\u2019re out selling your services and you find yourself on the opposite side of an issue from a prospect like I did, try the Ransberger Pivot to win them over to your side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Winning a prospect over to your way of thinking can make the difference between earning their business or not. The question is, how to do it without telling them they\u2019re wrong and sending them running. Early in my career I came across a principle that helps me through these difficult situations. Years ago, I met […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":987,"featured_media":34304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43902],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-professional-development"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n