Imagine having $10,00 in your hands and throwing it down the drain, all because you made one stupid mistake.
I did exactly that and it still haunts me to this day.
A few years back I was quoting for an email marketing project for a corporate training company.
It was a pretty simple project and I knew I could do something good with it.
And so we got to the final call and I was walking the marketing director and CEO through the proposal.
Finally, I got to the price and I said “the investment is $10,000, we just need a $5000 deposit and we can get started today.”
There was the usual silence and a murmur of acceptance.
And then I just…froze.
To this day I have no idea why.
I basically could not get the words out.
All I needed to say was:
“Whats the long credit card number on the card you’ll be using? I’ll run that now.”
The key here is that I clearly have done this before and, even if the give an objection, it moves the conversation forward.
Instead, eventually, the CEO asked a question about mailing rates and open rates and I completely lost control of the call.
To cut a long story short, I fumbled the end of the call and messed up the close. The lead ended up using another service, but I know it’s because I got the close wrong.
If you don’t have a method for selling, you’re at your customer’s method for buying.
