Sometimes, life and business lessons come from strange scenarios. Here's one between a solar guy and a blinds man that's oddly related to martial arts marketing and business.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Why building rapport with your customers is crucial
• Don't sabotage your sales with wrong assumptions turn into a blind bullet
• How to deal with price queries and objections
• Why you should educate customers and promote the value proposition
• And more

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TRANSCRIPTION

Sales situations and so forth – it could be weird sometimes. Let's take it where it could be, maybe the guy just had two bad appointments, and everybody gave him a lowball and said, “Hey, I can't afford this thing.” Well, maybe that happens to you in your school, right? You maybe get, do a tour with one prospect, two prospects, and maybe they're just not the right fit, or you get the same objection.

Hey, George here, I hope you're well. So, I just had this really interesting episode happen at my house, and I knew there was a story in the lesson, or lesson in the story there somewhere. Just been mulling it over in my head, because it was a bit weird. It was a bit strange, and so I thought I would share the story and the lesson I got from it. So, it involves a solar guy (guy that sells solar systems), a blinds man (guy that sells blinds) and a martial artist (me). 

So anyway, we just moved into this new house, and we had two appointments on Saturday. One involved the solar guy to tell us about putting in the solar system and the other was a guy that's going to put up blinds at our alfresco area. Anyway, we had the meeting scheduled 90 minutes apart. And the solar guy comes in, and I don't know about you, but I'm always skeptical of any sales situation.

I always like trying to spot the intent. You know, where's this guy at? Is he just trying to make a sale? Or is he actually going to actively give me sincere information? Right?

So, I'm always trying to spot the intent, anyway. So, this guy comes in and he sits down and goes through the solar stuff. I asked all the questions, and you know, I'm just trying to get a clear understanding of what it involves. I don't have much knowledge on solar stuff. And anyway, so, got a lot of info from him, and I was happy with what he shared. 

But 20 minutes in, the door knocks and it's the blinds man, the guy that sells the blinds that walks in. And he's scheduled for an hour later, right? So, he's like 70 minutes early.

Anyway, so I stay with the solar guy, and my wife starts speaking to the blinds man. And here's where the lesson comes in, right? So, he builds no rapport, he doesn't connect, he walks out to the alfresco area, and he asks, “What is your budget?” Kind of like you maybe in your school, right? How many people just ask you, “How much is it?” You know, they don't want to know anything. Anyway, well, this is a sales guy asking that.

So, it's kind of like an interrogation, like, “What is your budget?” And well, my wife, she doesn't know what blinds cost, neither do I. And, and so she just, you know, pulled a figure out of thin air, just said, “I don't know. $1,000?”

I mean, what do you want to say to the sales guy? “Hey, I'm prepared to spend 10, 20 grand on blinds,” or are you going to go in on the lower margin, right? So anyway, she says $1,000 and he just bases everything on that $1,000 and changes his whole positioning and just anything my wife asks, he just says, “No, that's too expensive. No, that's too expensive.”

And so, first up, the appointment was scheduled so that we could learn and understand what these blinds are about and he gives us nothing. He just keeps, you know, saying that's too expensive, that. But here's what he does. He starts giving us his opinion on solar. And so he starts telling us how solar is awful and it doesn't work. It doesn't work for him in his circumstance, but he doesn't know my circumstance, right? 

So, lesson number two – he just assumes who we are and what we're about. Anyway, and this is where it gets weird is, he starts to depart, and he walks into the lounge area and he starts attacking this poor solar guy. We're standing back, and I'm like, “What's going on here?” And he's going on at the solar guy, what a ripoff it is, and how it doesn't work for this, it doesn't work for that. 

And my wife and I are standing in the alfresco area watching this debate between – the solar guy, hats off to him for really handling this situation really well. And this blinds guy just carrying on – “Do you guarantee this? Do you guarantee that? You know, for a solar system you put in 10 years ago,” and we're just standing back, watching this debate, like, that was kind of useless, you know? 

This guy's told us everything about his opinion on solar, but nothing about blinds! Anyway, it just made me think, right, like, sales situations and so forth – it could be weird sometimes. Let's take it where it could be, you know, maybe the guy just had two bad appointments, and everybody gave him a lowball and said, “Hey, I can't afford this thing.” Well, maybe that happens to you in your school, right? You maybe get, do a tour with one prospect, two prospects, and maybe they're just not the right fit, or, you know, you get the same objection. 

Then, you know, where does that come from? Is that something that you are maybe saying, and it's bringing up that objection? Or by tour number three, are you that frustrated with the previous two, that you carry over that same energy, and you handle it the same way, and now you just assume that they can't afford it either, because you had such a bad run? 

So, I think what you can really take from that, right, is if you see a few bad prospects, and they're just not a good fit, remember to just make the space right and clear your energy when you go to the next one, because they are not the previous guys. 

The other thing is, you know, when people tell you the price, why did they do that? Well, the reason we did is because we didn't know what to ask, right? So, same thing with your prospects, when your prospects walk into your school or inquire online.

They are surprised because they have no clue about martial arts, right? So, the only thing they're going to ask you is how much it is, because they don't know. So, it's your job to educate them, right?

And then number three is just don't assume – don't assume you know a situation, because our situation is completely different to him. Solar works if you are at home all day. I work from home, so yeah, I probably use most of the power. I don't know.

But in my case it works, for him it doesn't. But anyway, you can't just assume that a situation is the same as yours, and not ask people the appropriate questions to get the right information from them.

Anyway, I thought I'd share that with you. I found it interesting. I kind of repeat that story, because it just made me think, “Wow, that's, what can you learn from that? And what can you take from that?”

And I think for anyone that's dealing with customers, especially in a martial arts school, where you are talking to people all the time, it's good to just have that mental check of every conversation as a new person with a new situation that you could learn from, and do just that.

Anyway. Hope that was helpful in some way. I'll see you in the next video. Cheers.

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