Lesson Twenty-Nine: The Worst Salesman I Ever Met

Like many parents of young children, it has occurred to me that I should save some money towards my children’s education.

Jess is an excellent mother, and it was on her maternal urging that we set up an appointment with an RESP (registered education savings plan) sales rep to discuss our children’s future.

Now I’m not a financial planner, nor particularly smart or knowledgeable about these things, but the big question I had was why is an RESP better than a regular retirement savings plan. Simple.

I’m not mean, so I won’t name the company or the particular sales rep that showed up at my door one Thursday evening. I’m sure he is tormented enough by his woeful closing rate.

I’m an inquisitive person. I like to ask questions before I make a decision. However, instead of answering my questions, what I received from him was a 45-minute monologue on the history of RESPs. During his lamentations, he read from what I affectionately call “the big black binder.” Many sales organizations have their own version. It is intended to be a sales tool, outlining features of a product, the history and competitive advantages. For practical reasons it starts at the beginning and goes in a linear fashion to the end to aid in finding what a sales rep needs.

In creative writing school they taught us a valuable marketing lesson: never start a story at the beginning. It’s boring and immediately conveys to the reader (or listener) exactly what is in store.There is no surprise, and what makes anything interesting is the surprise factor.

What was in store for me was 45 minutes of trying to figure out how I could politely get this man out of my house. I don’t remember a single detail of the meeting except the dreaded “black binder,” and my discomfort.

To engage a prospect you must give them something to be excited about. Starting with a benefit is a good way to do this. It’s the hook, and the reason a prospect has allowed you to access his time.The benefit is the emotional reason to buy the product. And like it or not, we buy from our heart.

A sales tool is exactly that: Something to access that supports salient points of the sale. Any salesman who does things by the book should be in a different line of work. Book binding, for instance?


Principles of Persuassion by Shane Spark