The thorn in the side close

When it comes to selling, you want to hit an emotional button.

A great close for hitting those buttons is the thorn in the side close.

It goes like this:

"Chances are, Miss Jones, the last time you saw something like this, you said you wanted to wait and get it next time, but if you think about it, this is the next time and if you don't get one now, when are you gonna get one?"

This close appeals to the urgency and fear that if the client puts you off, he or she may never actually get a chance to own the product or service you sell. Remember, many times, people want what you got, they just don't want to admit it.

Door to door sales at its best

The fact is door to door sales people are still in existence.

Some people have a hard time believing that door to door sales still survives as a viable marketing method.

One of the biggest door to door sales organizations is Kirby vacuum cleaners. A Kirby vacuum salesman will tel you, there's nothing quite like door to door vacuum sales.

Most sales people will agree that the biggest challenge is finding a lead.

Look at it from a Kirby salesman perspective when you have to go out into residential neighborhood areas and scope out prospects for an expensive vacuum cleaner.

The vacuum may cost in the range of $1500-2000 or more depending on what market it's sold in.

There are several steps to making a Kirby vacuum sale

First you have to find a prospect. This can be done one of several ways. The most common ways being to knock a prospects door or to set an appointment ahead of time.

The simplest and most readily available method is door to door. Since you have complete control over when and where you demonstrate your Kirby vacuum equipment.

You are typically gonna have to to demo your equipment for anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours or more. Usually a demonstration takes about 1 hour to 90 minutes.

New sales people are encouraged to use what is called a "factory demo".

A factory demo is pretty generic and it includes a thorough demonstration of each aspect of the vacuum cleaner using traditional "sales clinchers" and closes.

In this generic demo sequence, the salesperson goes through a bit a detail.

Since dealers have found more recently that an "upright demo" is a quicker way of qualifying the prospect as a potential buyer. In this demo version, the salesperson immediately sets the vacuum up in its upright position.

By doing this, the salesperson is immediately able to hone in on the shock factor of the dirt that is in the carpet. This is usually much more sufficient than using attachments in the beginning, since most people have busy schedules, they do little more than sweep the floor with their vacuum anyways.

The attachments are more detailed and therefore may appeal more to the detailed person who are few and far between.

Now this is a lesson for all types of sales people. Appeal to the most common hot buttons first to establish rapport the quickest.

For example, when we go to the car lot as a prospect, what do we want to hear and see?

It's simple, we want to hear logic, we want to see style....results...potency.

We want to hear all the logical reasons that are buying the product so that we can justify it to our better halves and loved ones.

We want to see all the emotional reason so that we can justify it to ourselves. We want to see that the care truly has more get up and go on the road. We want to feel the leather seats and we want to see the look on Bobs face when he sees us driving a new Hummer.

On the other hand, we want to be able to go home and justify it to the people who trust us, so that we maintain their respect.

We want to be able to say that this new Hummer has more towing capacity which you need since you live in a mountainous area and you do plan to buy a boat one day.

We want to think that by owning such and such brand, we will have the prestige we need to be successful in business.

We want to think we got that last "gold" one which means we are more and more unique.

This is some ridiculous logic maybe, but it is the kind of logic people use to buy things.

Remember: Show emotion, talk logic