Why you do not know what the client needs, and what they want

The biggest risk in a sales meeting is assuming you already know what the client needs. The client is not really buying your service. They are buying an end to something that keeps happening to them, and the only way to find out what that is, is to ask the person themselves.

Most owners try to influence the end of the meeting, with a better argument, a discount or a little pressure. But the moment when the client buys, or says they will think about it, was settled well before that. It is decided by what you discovered, not by what you said.

The warning the source prints in capitals

The source stresses this sentence in a way it almost never does, in capital letters: “YOU CANNOT GO ON THE ASSUMPTION THAT YOU KNOW WHAT THE PUBLIC NEEDS AND WANTS.” Straight after it comes the instruction: go out and find out from the people themselves.

This is not advice about being humble. It is a practical point. Of everything in the meeting, your guess about the client's needs is the only part you cannot test on the spot, unless you ask.

Suppose an owner who is sure his customers want a low price. A handful of short conversations with them shows that what they want is certainty about timings, and that they would pay more for it. Had he built his offer on his own assumption, he would have cut prices for customers who never asked for that.

Or take a designer who assumes her clients want branding. It turns out they want something else entirely: for people to stop asking them what their business does. The work stays the same work, but the message that sells it changes completely.

That gives you a simple test. If your proposal is settled before the two of you have even sat down, what you prepared was never a meeting. It was a lecture.

What the client is really looking for

What you are looking for in the meeting is what the booklet calls the person's ruin. The source defines it as the cause of someone's downfall: something, or someone, that leaves them open to influence in one area of their life, or across all of it.

Put more usefully: whatever is wrecking a person's life is exactly what they will want dealt with.

In business that carries over directly. The person across the table did not come for the service as such. They came because there is something in their life or their business that they want to be over. Work out what it is, and the sale very nearly takes care of itself.

Suppose the owner of a small garage who asks for marketing advice. In the conversation it turns out that his ruin is that two mechanics leave him every year, and he is forever training new people. Marketing would have fixed none of that.

Or the owner of a shop who asks for a website. Her ruin is that she is answering messages until midnight and never gets round to ordering stock. The website is what she asked for, but it is not the thing she needs to stop.

Why the first answer is almost never accurate

This is why asking once is not enough. According to the source, most people are not trained to examine themselves. So the first answer you get will nearly always be a symptom, meaning what the client feels, and not the cause behind it.

The source gives a precise example. A person will say they have no money, when what they really mean is that they are unable to produce money. The two sentences sound almost the same, and lead to two completely different offers. The first invites a discount. The second invites work.

The same thing happens with other complaints. An owner who says he has no time is usually not describing the real problem. The real problem is that he has no procedure, so every task takes far longer than it should.

There is also the opposite case. An owner says his problem is that he does not know how to set prices, and that really is the problem. It happens, which is exactly why you check rather than assume.

The rule that remains is simple. The first answer is where you start. The second question is the one that uncovers.

What it changes in your next meeting

If you take this in, you walk into a different kind of meeting. You arrive with questions instead of a ready-made offer. You do not argue with the first answer, you ask a further question about it. And you are not selling a service, you are looking for the thing the client wants to stop.

The booklet gives this chapter two exercises, one to spot it and one to do it, followed by a self-check. The booklet is built in two halves, discovery and closing, and this chapter belongs to the first.

When you walk out of a meeting without a sale, it is worth asking first whether you found out what was ruining the person sitting across from you. Sometimes that is the whole answer.