Selling the Sale

My first sales manager once explained to me a very poor sales technique that he would often see, as a way of warning me away from it. He said: “Never sell on rescission.”

“Rescission” is a fancy term for canceling a contract. Many states have laws requiring contracts above a certain amount to have a built-in period of time where the contract can be canceled at no penalty. Poor salespeople, eager to get the name on the dotted line, would use that as a selling technique. They’d basically say something like: “Don’t worry about signing right now; you have a three-day cancelation period so if you change your mind, you can always cancel it tomorrow.”

You can probably already see why that’s a bad sales technique. You’re practically asking someone to cancel on you, and you’re ignoring any reasonable objections they might have in the moment, when it’s possible that you could spend a little more time and find an actual solution that works for you and your client.

In any transaction, you have to not just sell the transaction itself. You have to sell the sale. You have to make the other party feel good about the deal they just made. Imagine you buy a cup of coffee for five bucks at a coffee shop. This is a pretty standard transaction, right? Okay, now imagine as soon as you handed over the money, the cashier yelled “No refunds! Hahahaha!” You’d probably not be enthusiastic about drinking the cup of coffee you’re about to get!

Perception matters. You should never make people feel like they just got taken – that’s not the way to get repeat business (or even to keep the business you just got). If you’re trying to build a strong foundation, you should make people feel thrilled to have made the deal with you. You should treat them even better after they’ve signed than you did before.

Unless, of course, you actually are scamming people. In which case… you know, don’t do that. But honest businesspeople can (and often do) shoot themselves in the foot because they don’t use basic sales techniques. In fact, the misconception that good sales professionalism is always shady is what keeps so many businesspeople from getting good at it, but really it’s just about savvy interactions that help all parties find what they’re looking for in mutually beneficial exchanges of maximum value.

And you get those by being good to people.