In our last blog, we talked about how you can have “Beginners luck “ forever, being a mannequin. Well, a smart doll, much like our favorite detective, Lieutenant Columbo. If you’ve ever watched the hit TV series Columbo, you know that he was a master at disarming his suspects by looking and acting like a fool. And Columbo always got his killer. You can do the same in sales by disarming your prospects when you play the fictional seller.
Mastering the Dummy curve it takes time and practice. It is a process that develops throughout your career in sales. As you improve with the use of Dummy curve focus, you will accelerate your growth as you learn to reassure your prospects and discover their pain. Let’s take a look at an example of Dummy curve in action:
Carlos is a salesman and works in the heater section of a department store. Carlos is a college student who works during the summer in New England. As you may know, New England summers are quite warm. Not many people are buying home heaters in July. Carlos waits patiently for a customer to arrive, but since he hasn’t had prospects for hours and is tired of standing, he sits down in a bucket to rest.
Finally, an old woman approaches and asks: “Do you have heaters?” Carlos gets off his bucket and says: “Well yes, we do.” He takes her to the heaters and they go through them together. They are reading the boxes and pulling out the instructions. He is learning with her, which strengthens their bond and generates a report between them. Before long, the lady says: “I’ll keep this one. Now where do I pay for it, son?” Carlos says, “Well, a little further; let me accompany you.” You take the heater to the cash register, someone calls her and she goes on her happy way.
Three weeks later, the company calls the department store manager and says: “Hey, your heater sales were up 300% during the same three weeks last year. What’s going on down there?” The manager responds, “Well, we have this boy named Carlos, he sits in a bucket.” Corporate then replies, “Well, send him here to heating school. He’s doing great. Let’s do even better.”
So Carlos goes to heater school and learns about BTUs, heat radiation and much more, increasing his knowledge of heater products. When he returns to the store a week later, he sits back on the bucket, only this time he leans forward. Another old lady walks into the heating department. Before she can even say anything, Carlos jumps out of the bucket and says: “I can help?” “Okay, yes,” she says, taking a step back, “I’m looking for a heater.” “Oh boy, we have heaters!”Carlos says enthusiastically.
Carlos shows him all the products and offers him the dog and pony show, talking about the fifteen different types of heaters that he has in the store. It goes on and on, superimposing characteristics on benefits, bombarding the lady with all the information she learned in heating school. Finally he stops and asks, “Do you have any questions?“She says, “Only one.”Carlos responds, “Yes, what is that?” She says meekly “Will you keep an old lady warm?” Carlos is not sure what to say. Exhausted, the old woman walks away and does not buy a heater.
For the next three weeks, Carlos’s sales have dropped. As you sit on your bucket, you begin to wonder why your numbers plummeted. “I was doing so well,” think to yourself. “Then I went to heating school. When I came back presenting my knowledge of the product, I did worse. Hmm. I’m going to go back to what I used to do at the beginning. Asking a lot of questions, listening a lot, and not talking so much.”
Carlos goes back to doing some of the things he did before the product training, on purpose, like asking questions instead of delivering product and feature monologues. Suddenly you realize that your heater sales are increasing again. Carlos responds to prospects’ questions very politely with his own questions, and in the process discovers the true intent of his questions. Carlos is uncovering the pain. He realizes that more people bond with him and more people buy instead of excusing himself by saying: “I’ll think about it.” He does even more of these “silly” things on purpose and fails to meet the goals of the previous weeks, at which point the corporate office calls him to congratulate him. Carlos discovers that he is not working as hard and is selling more. Pretty silly, huh?
Oh, one more thing: Stay tuned for more information on the fictional curve. In our next blog, we will cover the three stages of the fictional curve.