“It was just one simple question. ‘Can you help me?’”
There was a customer of ours that we were doing just a little bit of business with, and we didn’t know a lot about them. I called out there to talk to the main guy and I was given the traditional blow off. I just wanted to hang up on him abruptly, but instead I used an approach that Sales Concepts taught me, which was simply to ask for help. I said ‘I’m sorry, I know I should know this, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He spent the next ten minutes on the phone with me going over the entire purchasing process—how they buy stuff, where they’re having trouble—he gave me all the information I needed. It was just one simple question: ‘Can you help me?’ That’s not something I would have done in the past. That was huge! It turned into some great business with them, too.
Kirk Zehnder, President and CEO
Earnest Machine
www.earnestmachine.com
95 employees
Since 1948