TL;DR: “Once they’re sold, stop selling”, in the way that it’s usually interpreted, is bad “classic sales advice” depending on the goals of your organization and how you view the role of a sales person. A big grain of salt: I’m not in sales, I’m an engineer, about 80% of my day to day is development and post sales support.
We’ve all heard it before… some form of “when you’ve got the sale, shut up” or, “once they’re sold, stop selling”. The idea is that when you get buy signals from the client, shut up and take their payment, get the contract signed, or whatever the next step is in your specific use case. This advice is all over - I’ve heard it repeated many times by many very smart and accomplished mentors and leaders and colleagues throughout my career. I get it, I even have some recollection of the very first time I heard it. And I want to be clear that I’m not advocating for continuing to ramble on when you have a client trying to hand you a credit card - but for something more nuanced.
The idea that maybe your goal, or the goal you should impress on your sales team, is not just to “get the sale”. But instead, to make sure you understand exactly what your client needs and that your solution is actually a good fit for them. I believe that doing this is actually in the best interest of your organization in the long term, much more so than just “shutting up” and getting the sale.
No surprise, I “killed a sale” by not knowing when to shut up. It was during my undergrad at URI, on the weekends I sold memberships at an upscale health club. I was a newbie to the sales process, and a couple came in to join. After going through the whole tour and spiel, we sit back down, go over pricing, etc, etc, and they are ready to join. As we’re filling out the contract (it was still paper at that time) we were continuing to chat about the gym’s amenities, they were particularly excited about the availability of the swimming pool. This particular gym has an indoor / outdoor pool that’s covered in the winter and open in the summer, and a lot of people were really into it. This couple was training for some event that involved swimming (I don’t remember if was a triathlon, or just a swim) - and as we were sitting there filling out the contract and jotting down their billing info, I reiterated some of benefits we had talked about previously. All was well and good, until I mentioned something they had not asked about, I had not thought to mention - the pool temperature was kept at about 86 degrees F in this particular gym. I’ve never been a swimmer, honestly I never though much about that fact. But on disclosing that, they exchanged a look, and asked to talk privately for a minute. When they called me back in, they let me know that they had changed their mind and would not be joining - apparently training rigorously in a pool that warm would not be comfortable and they didn’t think that it would help them best prepare for their race.
That was a complete 180, I went from a done deal and taking credit card info to “thanks for coming in, let me know if anything changes” - and walking them to the door. We had open offices, my manager heard the whole thing. After they left, he pulled me aside and hit me with often repeated, sage advice: “Once they’re sold, stop selling!” I was (playfully) ridiculed for a bit for having just literally talked the prospect out the sale, and I took it heart. I learned, from then on, once I got to yes, I said nothing except for telling them where to sign. I’ve probably repeated that phrase, and I’ve certainly heard it a million times since.
But now I’m convinced that it’s actually terrible advice in the context of the long term organization health. It all depends on what your real goals are. And maybe for an individual sales person who is incentivized only to close sales, it’s not necessarily bad advice. After all, they will do what is in their best interest, and certainly talking the client out of a sale is not in their best interest when a commission or bonus check is on the line. But could it be in the interest of the organization?
My assumption here is that the goal of the organization is to serve clients as best as they can, and help them address or solve whatever problem it is that they are trying to solve in exchange for their money. Obviously if your organization’s only goal is to get the sale, by all means, “once the client is sold, STFU!” But if not, if you have a goal of serving your clients and addressing their problem, maybe you should reconsider.
I’m proposing that maybe you don’t STFU and “get the paperwork started” until you’re comfortable the client has a good understanding of your product (and an accurate one) and that you have a good enough understanding of their reason for buying. Until then, keeping listening - and if information comes up that you think might be a deal breaker, so be it. You’ve learned something, built rapport, and saved everyone time and effort.
Think about it a bit… let’s say there is something about your service that the client can learn that would make them not want to buy (even if you don’t realize this, as in my example with the pool temperature). They’re giving you buy signals, so “stop selling” and “get the paperwork started”, and you get the sale! Woohoo, you’re all set and on the way to hit your numbers… But now you have a client is presumably going to learn something about your solution that means it may not actually be the best solution for them. Is this what you want as an organization? You know have a client who presumably will either cancel, or be unhappy, this will eat up customer service and / or labor from other departments as they try to address the clients use case for which your product is not ideal. Further, no matter how good you are on the service front, you’re at least unlikely to generate good word of mouth from this client - and at worse you’ll get the opposite.
Wouldn’t it be better to learn about this upfront, even if it costs you that particular sale? Maybe it’s not better for the individual sales person, depending on how they’re incentivized. And it certainly looks like a hit to revenue too… but you will have gained confidence with this client, and more importantly you will have learned something about the fit between their problem and your solution that you may not have known, and you’ve done it without wasting more of both your and the clients time. You could could then use this information, in aggregate, to decide if changing to accommodate this use case fits within your organizations goals, and if so, do the necessary development to get there, and call this person back when it’s done. If it doesn’t, you’ve saved everyone time and built trust and good will, and you’re able to spend effort and your resources on serving the customers for which your products are actually a good fit.
In my gym membership experience, imagine that I hadn’t kept gushing about the benefits and haphazardly mentioned the temperature of the pool to this athletic couple - they would have joined for sure, and I would’ve got the sale and a nice little commission. However, they would have soon canceled, after they realized that the product didn’t serve them - maybe I would’ve kept my commission and “closed deal” depending on how long it took them to realize the mistake. But either way their time would’ve have been wasted, they wouldn’t have been well served, and my employers resources would have been wasted (administration, billing, service, sales).
That just doesn’t seem like a favorable outcome to me! It looks ok in the short term, and maybe it’s ok for the sales person assuming it’s a big organization. But looking at it from an organizational point of view, is that what you would want?
If I walk into the Subaru dealership and say “I want to buy the latest Outback now” - you would be hard pressed to find a salesperson who would ask: “Would you like to test drive it first?” instead of shoving a P&S agreement in my face. And of course, it’s not in the sales person’s interest to do anything thing other than to get the deal closed under normal incentive schemes. But is it really in the best interest of the organization? Either I drive the car, it’s everything I’ve every dreamed of and I still buy it, or I don’t - in which case I would’ve ended up with a car I was not happy with, maybe cancelled the sale and maybe not, but I would certainly complain to all my (3) friends about it!
It’s not just my silly examples, this advice is all over:
Check out this Hubspot blog on exactly this topic.
“Again, people buy for their reasons. When you bring up new information, it could conflict with those reasons. You might surface something that creates doubt.”
My point exactly! You might surface doubt with some new information! That’s (1) valuable information for you to iterate on, and (2) you’ve saved everyone time and effort that information is truly a deal breaker.
And similar advice:
- https://www.thepitchqueen.com/how-to-kill-the-sale-the-dangers-of-talking-after-the-customer-is-already-sold/
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kevindoohan_once-theyre-sold-stop-selling-as-a-activity-7090740035754328064-yPW0?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
Wrapping up
I guess whether “Once they’re sold, stop selling” is good advice or not, depends on whether you place more value on a sale today despite the potential negative repercussions of a mismatch between your clients needs and your service, or on finding the right clients for your product and serving them to best of your ability.
Do you see the role of sales person as persuading people to buy your product/service? Or are they the front line of your organization, helping to identify the right clients for your product and helping them to understand how your product can help them solve their problem, in a transparent way - one that acknowledges the limitations of your product and the fact that it may not be a good fit for everyone?
Obviously, my opinion is that ending up with either (1) a happy client who is well served by the solution or (2) building trust through transparency and learning about how the needs of a potential future client is better outcome for the organization all around, and that “age old wisdom” is garbage.
What do you think?