One of my clients recently talked with me about how challenging himself to make his prospects comfortable has benefited his commercial real estate business.
Not long ago, he was meeting with an acquaintance to look at a very large property. My client talked with his prospect about the building and the surrounding area, but he also shared with his prospect how and why he works with people the way he does.
He told his prospect, "Hey, if any part of this makes you uncomfortable, let me know. I don't want you to make the wrong decision—I want you to make sure you're comfortable with the decision you're making and seeing where that goes." He gave his prospect total freedom to back out of working with him as a real estate agent and looking at that property in particular.
Instead of choosing to back out of the process, the prospect was comfortable enough that he wanted to work with my client at the end of that conversation.
In most sales conversations, there's the possibility of discomfort on both sides. You usually can't know how comfortable or uncomfortable a prospect is without a conversation. When you try to make the prospect comfortable, that changes the interaction.
If you're sincere when you tell prospect they should choose whoever they're comfortable with, that's a huge pressure reliever. You don't have to be the right choice for every lead you generate.
Personally, I love it when we get hired by churches and nonprofits to work with them, and I encourage them to use language like my client used in his sales interaction. Telling a prospective member that you don't know if you're the right church for them, but you'd be happy to help them find the right one if you're not—that really changes the dynamics of the situation.
If you're prospecting, you can let someone know up front that you don't know if the two of you should visit or not. Offer to take 30 seconds to tell them why you've called, and then they can let you know what they think. Let the prospect determine whether or not you continue the conversation.
Because ultimately, if they don't have a pain that you can address, they're not going to be a good fit for you anyway. Giving the prospect the opportunity to decide whether they want to continue the conversation makes them more comfortable, and can save you time if they really aren't a good fit.
