Selling works best face to face, and best of all at the client's own place. The phone is excellent for settling when and where to meet, and weak at finding out what the person needs and closing with them. The place you meet also matters, because it decides how relaxed the client is and how willing they are to talk.
This matters more than it looks. In a meeting you sit across from one person who cleared the time for you, and by the end of it they either buy or say they will think about it. According to the booklet, what settles that moment is what you found out during the meeting. Finding things out is very hard to do through a handset.
The phone books meetings, and the meeting sells
The first distinction in the chapter saves a lot of hours. According to the source, the phone can be used to book meetings, yet it performs poorly in a sales conversation.
The booklet describes this as a division of labour, with no opinion against phones behind it. The phone does one job very well, which is settling when and where. It does another job badly: discovering what the person really needs, and closing with them.
A conclusion follows that takes some pressure off. If you have tried to sell by phone and it keeps failing, the tool you picked may be the problem, and you may not be.
Suppose a consultant who spent two months trying to close deals in twenty-minute calls. When he moved the selling into meetings and kept the phone for booking only, his closing rate tripled. Or take a studio owner who stopped sending quotes and began offering a short meeting with no commitment. The leads stayed the same leads, and the result changed.
The opposite case is familiar to anyone who works in the field. Suppose a fitter who puts long calls into explaining the technical side over the phone. His customers finish those calls happy and fully informed, and then buy from whoever turns up. He did all the explaining, and somebody else got the deal.
The slogan almost nobody carries out
The source includes one line meant for the wall, phrased as an instruction to every seller: “sell the customer in front of you”.
It sounds obvious, and it almost never happens. A typical owner walks into a meeting thinking about the offer, the price and everything they want to get said, while the person across the table stays in the background. The slogan puts attention back in the only place a sale can happen, which is the person in front of you.
Suppose an owner who arrives with a twelve-slide deck and asks no questions. She sells what she prepared, and the client sits to one side. At the next meeting she comes without a deck, asks four questions and closes.
That is why the booklet warns against a deck prepared in advance. It is the most reliable way to stop listening. It gives a feeling of professionalism, and it speaks to an average customer who does not exist. The one in front of you is a particular person with something going on in their business today, and a deck has no way of asking about it.
Why go to them instead of waiting
The third rule in the chapter runs against the instinct of most self-employed people. According to the source, you should go to the customer instead of making the customer come to you.
The reason is practical. A busy person rarely shows up, and when they do, they are neither relaxed nor ready to be sold to. In your office they are a visitor, and in theirs they are at home.
The second sales book the booklet leans on says it in a short instruction: for the closing effort, use their office or their home, because familiar surroundings calm a person and threaten them less.
The mechanism is this. When a person is surrounded by the things that matter to them, they steer the conversation. That is what you want to happen, because when they lead, they talk.
Suppose a builder who stops inviting clients to the office and starts turning up at their flat. The conversation is the same conversation, except that now the client shows the problem instead of describing it. Or a consultant who meets clients on their own premises and, within ten minutes, sees three things they would never have mentioned.
The opposite case works too. Suppose an owner who insisted that clients come to him, to save travelling time. He saved the journeys and lost the meetings.
What if you cannot get to them
Sometimes there is no way to reach the client's home or office. Even then, the booklet says, choose a place the client picked, because control of the place is worth more than a comfortable chair.
This chapter opens the booklet for a simple reason. Everything after it, from discovering what the person really needs to asking for a signature, happens inside the meeting and depends on the client talking. A channel where discovery is hard, or a place where the client is uneasy, makes each of those steps harder.
The booklet gives the chapter two exercises, one for spotting and one for doing, and a self-check. It is the first chapter, and the chapters after it cover what happens in the meeting itself, from discovery to the signature.
The sale happens with one person across from you, and it goes best where they feel at home.