The average American is exposed to 4,000-10,000 ads per day. That’s nearly double the number of ads the average person saw in 2007 and over five times as many ads as the average person saw in the 1970s.
This explains why selling is becoming harder as your prospects’ social media feeds and TV sets are increasingly flooded with ads.
The art of selling to an ‘unsellable’ generation
As Jeremy rightly points out in this podcast, people don’t want to buy anymore. The 21st-century consumer is aggressively protective of his dollars.
This means you will immediately get turned down when you offer them your product. Unfortunately, many door-to-door sales reps engage in what Jeremy calls “product pushing.”
Product pushing is a highly pressurized sales approach in which sellers attempt to force their product down the buyer’s throat.
Here, the seller keeps rambling about the project up and down, hoping to exhaust the buyer’s resistance.
Mistaken for positive persistence, these reps feel the more they hold on and stay in front of their prospects, the more their chances of selling.
But no, the best you can get from a homeowner who allows you to stay on his porch for so long is courtesy – not his dollars.
Ultimately, the rep is dejectedly washed with a barrage of NOs, ending in zero sales.
Jeremy proposes a far more practical solution: helping the buyer solve his problem.
Ahhh, we can hear you screaming this is a commonly recycled formula in door-to-door sales. But Jeremy adds a new spice: helping the buyers identify his problem.
Let us talk more about Jeremy Miner’s NEPQ sales technique.
Showing your prospective buyer his problem
The interesting thing about the 21st-century door-to-door sales industry is that you rarely meet a homeowner with a problem he has already discovered and wants to solve immediately.
Homeowners with pressing needs are likely to have solved them before you come around. They must have bought from your competitors or gone to the local store to satiate such need.
This is why the most reliable way to sell today is to help the homeowner identify a critical problem and intelligently establish that sense of urgency regarding why your prospect needs to solve that problem ASAP. This is what makes the NEPQ sales technique awesome.
You don’t create that sense of urgency by directly pressing the homeowner to buy NOW NOW NOW.
With Jeremy’s NEPQ sales technique, you ask a systematic set of questions that enable the homeowner to discover, “Oh shoot, I have a problem here!”
This can only be achieved when you patiently establish credibility with that prospect. Behavioral science in sales has firmly established that no one will contemplate buying from you when your legitimacy is in doubt.
NEPQ Questions to Ask Your Prospects
The first phase of the NEPQ sales method involves systematically disarming the buyer, making them relaxed and comfortable enough for you to open up.
Remember, you want to assist them in DISCOVERING their problem. As is typical of a discovery process, this requires some digging in.
Jeremy espouses starting the conversation with a mix of genuine curiosity and empathy. Then comes the connecting question.
The essence of the connecting question is to establish you are interested in your prospect’s unique situation.
If you establish your concern about them, they will likely open up about their situation immediately before you for a diagnosis.
The connecting question is often tailed with the situational question. The situational question establishes the homeowner’s (in door-to-door sales) current situation, followed by the objective question.
The objective question projects where your prospect wants to be. Specifically, it identifies the results they aim to achieve.
Between the situational and objective questions is the vacuum you want your solution to fill. There is likely your prospect’s problem.
Rounding things up
Admittedly, as Jeremy envisages in the podcast, this NEPQ sales script (Neuro-Emotional Persuasion Questioning) doesn’t always happen in one day.
You would understand that you don’t gain someone’s trust in one day. This methodology is reliably built around persuasiveness and establishing trust.
But in the long run, the NEPQ sales technique is far more effective than “hoping” you could jump on doors and sell your prospects.
Join us at the D2D Business Bootcamp in Sandy, Utah, from April 22nd to 23rd. Our corporate executive coaching will explore integrating Jeremy Miner’s NEPQ sales technique into your team’s training and cultivating a winning sales culture.
Reserve your spot now and receive a free 30-minute video on Leadership and Recruiting.
Join us as we chart a new course for success in the competitive sales world.
I knocked doors since I was 11! Never bought into the whole hourly normal job, and used direct sales to be the vehicle to create MASSIVE success. I Started the Direct Sales division for Solcius as their VP building it up to have 70+ sales reps nation wide. In 2018 I left to pursue a greater mission to unify and uplevel the Door to Door industry and founded the D2D Experts.
