Our money concepts can really trip us up if we're not careful. What may be a lot of money to us personally or in business may be nothing to someone else.
A few years back, I was on the phone with a prospect I'd never met in person. He actually lived in another state and had been referred to us by someone else.
The normal first step when someone works with us is to do assessments for their team. His team was fairly large, so the assessments were going to be somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000.
I shared the dollar figure with the guy. He said, "Great, let's go ahead."
I quickly hid my surprise and took down his credit card information. But before we hung up, I said to him, "I've got to ask you something. You made that decision very quickly?"
"Yeah?" he responded.
I continued, "I visit with a lot of people that don't make a decision in the $10,000 to $15,000 range very quickly. Why were you able to make that decision so fast?"
He chuckled. "That's the smallest decision I've had to make this month!"
It turns out that because of the industry and position he was in, his decisions typically involved a lot more money. He shared that he'd just bought a piece of equipment that was close to two million dollars. So $15,000 wasn't a big decision at all!
That was relatively early on in my Sandler career, so at the time it was pretty surprising. But it's really common for salespeople to let things like that trip them up. Maybe they end up discounting before they give the prospect the opportunity to buy. Maybe they show their shock at such a big number that the prospect backs out.
Years later, I still remember that story, and it helps me remember that how big or small a figure is to me doesn't matter. It's going to be different for whomever I'm talking with.
