Salespeople Must Stop Snorkeling and Start Scuba Diving

We talk a lot about the importance of using a consultative approach instead of a transactional approach to better differentiate and sell value instead of price.  When we explain consultative selling, we usually emphasize the importance of listening and questioning.  When we further explain effective listening and questioning, it becomes much more difficult to describe in a paragraph or in the absence of a demonstration or role-play.

Until today.

Snorkeling, or moving along the surface of the ocean, is akin to poor questioning, moving from fish to fish or question to question, never finding anything of significance and only seeing that which is near the surface.

Scuba diving, or doing a deep dive, is akin to good, tough, timely questions that lead to the buried treasure of selling – a prospect’s compelling reason to buy from you.  When you scuba dive, you explore a single site, but when you snorkel you go sight-seeing and continue traveling without really stopping to explore.

Dive in, continue your dive, and don’t stop the dive until you find the treasure.