Dan Hudock: Sales and Redemptive Reflection

In Sales for the Startup, we had a guess speaker, Dan Hudock.  This man is a sales genius.  He walked us through a few different exercises to help us think on our feet and engage in a sales conversation.  First, we had to ask questions to each other, but we could not respond with “I,” “me,” “my,” or any other similar first-person words.  This taught us how the sales conversation needs to be all about the customer and the salesperson needs to stop talking about his or herself.  The second exercise was playing an alphabet game where groups of three or four had to carry on a conversation, but each person had to start their sentence with the next letter in the alphabet.  Here, we learned to think on our feet and think ahead.  Lastly, Hudock shared that a sales person needs to control the conversation with questions and reverses.  For example, when someone said that his price was too high, Hudock responded with “okay,” and then turned to walk out the door, but then stopped and asked, “Has the reason you brought me in today changed.”  In our class, a student asked if this was ethical, as it could be seen to be manipulative.

The short answer is this is just what the client needed.  A sales person must come alongside the client and help him or her discover the reason they may or may not need the product or service the salesperson is providing.  A salesperson is helping a person move from an area of discomfort to comfort and a better place than before.  Sales is not meant to be manipulative– even thought many salespeople are manipulative.  It is not just about treating a client respectively, but also coming alongside them to bless them in the end.